Manufacturing & Industrial

Since the early 1990s, global manufacturing activities have begun shifting to low cost manufacturing areas in Asia, starting in China and now increasingly in Southeast Asia. This includes branded and contract manufacturing in areas of electronics, plastics, machinery, consumer products, apparel, automotive, chemical products and many more.

The business environment has become more mature, consisting of entities ranging from the early joint ventures with local partners to now wholly owned foreign enterprises. Corporations continue to transfer their production capacity to Asia thus the demand for senior managers with Asia experience, especially China, has increased dramatically.

We have witnessed a transformation of talent requirements from employers from primarily expatriates in the last decade to now an increasing demand for local nationals with multinational corporate experience. Moreover, the trend of major Asian countries evolving from traditional manufacturing hubs to key consumer markets translate to an increasing need for local leadership talent in the sales and business development areas. As a result, the salaries of local managers have risen at a much faster pace than that of expatriates in recent years.

In China, with the development of the 2nd and 3rd tier cities, the location base of leadership talent has expanded beyond Shanghai and Beijing into the west, northeast and southern regions. Despite this change in the geographical landscape, our seasoned consultants are able to identify and place the best candidates for their roles in a cost efficient manner.

Our experience enables us to develop successful search strategies in identifying international and local candidates for our clients in different countries across the region.