Tuk Samathi, 21, part of the pro?duction team that bonds the Teamgeist balls together, said she would ask for the day shifts during the World Cup so she could stay up late watching the games.

“I’ve always enjoyed watching football. This time it will be more fun because they will be using our balls,” said a smiling Tuk, whose monthly salary amounts to slight?ly more than what one Teamgeist ball retails for in Germany, about Bt5,000.

Adidas began sourcing thermal-bonded footballs from Molten (Thailand), a joint venture between Molten Japan and a Thai partner, in 2003.

The factory uses a special glu?ing and heat-treatment process to bond together the outside leather pieces of the football without the need of stitches.

“This is new technology,” said William Anderson, Adidas’ head of social and environmental affairs for Asia/Pacific. “The World Cup on this occasion is using this ther?mal-bonded ball for the first time.”

The new technology took three years to develop through close col?laboration between Molten’s tech?nical expertise and Adidas’s prod?uct-development skills, Anderson said.

Adidas claims the Teamgeist is its best-performing ball ever, using a “revolutionary” 14-panel config?uration that guarantees near-per?fect roundness and fewer seams.

The thermal-bonding produc?tion process has also done away with the need for stitching on the ball’s surface, making it more waterproof.

“Usually when you play football in the rain the water will get into the ball, but these thermal balls are made to keep the moisture out,” said Molten (Thailand) director Masami Sakamoto.

Adidas and Molten have been working together for more than two decades. Molten, which also manufactures basketballs, volley?balls and handballs, is a well-known sports brand name on the Japanese market. It has a licensee agreement with Adidas to sell Adidas balls in Japan and is a major supplier of soccer balls to the glob?al sports-goods marketer.

In 2005 Molten (Thailand) manufactured 440,000 thermal-bonded footballs for Adidas that were sold worldwide, primarily to the soccer-crazed markets of Europe.

Molten, like hundreds of other Japanese companies, moved its main production base from Japan to Thailand in 1989 to escape ris?ing costs at home.

Japan was forced to let the yen appreciate in the late 1980s, rais?ing production costs in Japan and automatically hiking its product prices abroad.

To keep their products compet?itive, thousands of Japanese firms migrated to Southeast Asia and other cheaper production bases.

“We made a survey of every country is Asia and decided that Thailand was the most interesting,” said Sakamoto.

The Japanese management at Molten (Thailand) says it is as proud as the Thai labourers that their product will be on interna?tional display in Germany this year.

“When Japan and South Korea hosted the last World Cup we bought our footballs from Adidas,” said Molten director Mikio Nakayama. “This time Adidas is buying from us.”

Asked if he planned to stay up at night to watch the games, Nakayama replied: “I’d like to, but we are too busy making the balls.”

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

CHON BURI