The company and Siriproject Construction Co Ltd, in cooperation with PS Natural Gas Co Ltd, yesterday signed a contract to assemble 200-300 natural-gas buses to serve Thailand's southern routes.

Piyapat Temjaroen, CEO of Siriproject, a local operator of domestic air-conditioned buses, said after the signing ceremony that Yantai Shuchi would bring in a few natural-gas buses for a six-month test starting next month.

He said if it was workable commercially, retrofitted NGV (natural gas for vehicles) engines would be used, which cost Bt6 million to Bt10 million per bus. Siriproject currently operates 60 of the 300 buses on the southern routes.

"If the test run is successful, there'll be other bus operators to joining the project," said Piyapat.

He said that with rising oil prices, the NGV bus project would help cut costs. "We believe using NGV will help the company reduce fuel costs by at least Bt5 per litre," he said.

Yantai Shuchi, a joint venture between the Chinese government and private firms, has its own technology for producing a new NGV-bus model with a 230-horsepower engine. The new model can travel 300 kilometres on a single tank, compared with 150 kilometres for current NGV-bus models.

Yantai Shuchi CEO Yang Zhang said his company planned to enter  the Thai NGV-bus market. However, it wanted the Thai government to support it by eliminating the 40-per-cent tariff for completely built NGV-bus imports.

He said if the government could eliminate that tariff, the company would invest directly in the Kingdom by building an assembly plant for NGV buses. Which was expected to cost about $1 billion.

Zhang said his company was currently looking in Nakhon Pathom and Ratchaburi for a suitable site. Yantai Shuchi is also interested in NGV gas distribution in Thailand. "The company wants to set up five or six NGV stations, which should cost about Bt50 million," he said.

Yantai Shuchi has produced 120 bus models in China. Last year, it spent 900 million yuan (Bt4.25 billion) on investments and posted 1.7 billion yuan in revenue, derived mainly from domestic sales and exports to Hong Kong and Europe.

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