JAKARTA – Dealing with the idle domestic market, PT Garuda Metalindo Tbk (BOLT), a nuts and bolts manufacturer for automotive spare part, is looking for other opportunities in the global market by targeting export sales to increase by up to 50% this year.

As seen in Financial Report Q1 2024, BOLT’s sales were indeed declining by up to 11.26% year-on-year (yoy), from IDR 411.75 billion to IDR 365.4 billion. The decrease is seemingly due to the correction in domestic sales by up to 13.5% yoy to IDR 342 billion. On the other hand, export sales shot up 44% yoy to IDR 23.7 billion.

According to Ervin Wijaya, President Director of BOLT, during Annual Public Expose of BOLT today (30/5), the company records 9 export destination countries. “Approximately 50% of our exports are sent to European countries, such as Germany,” said Anthony Wijaya, Director of BOLT.

Aside from Germany, BOLT also reported exports to United States and Mexico, Thailand, as well as India. According to Anthony, American automotive manufacture market has shown rapid growth, similar to Thailand in Southeast Asia region, which reported high rate of vehicle production.

Meanwhile, despite local supply in India is deemed cheaper, Anthony mentioned of challenge in the goods’ quality within Indian domestic market, thereby prompting the companies to look for import alternatives.

BOLT’s export target in 2024 is said to reach IDR 90 billion, or equal to 5.3% of total revenue target this year. On the same occasion, Anthony said that the revenue target of BOLT in 2024 clocks up to IDR 1.7 trillion.

“There are many projects that we have been doing for a couple of years that have been only realised this year, and there are some that begin mass-production this year. Thus, we expect export to be able to increase 50%,” he explained further.

Furthermore, in order to navigate low-performing automotive industry within the country, BOLT also aims to diversify its user portfolio to infrastructure sector. “We have secured several orders from Komatsu, Hitachi, and others,” added Ervin, albeit not mentioning the contract value.

It is worth mentioning that until Q1 2024, BOLT has realised 11% of its capital expenditure budget for 2024, which totals IDR 49 billion. This capex allocation includes machine repair, factory efficiency through automatization, as well as operational enhancement through investment in digital equipment. (ZH)