Robot & Automation Paradise in the Making

A trail for robots to follow
So what does a three-hundred-year old idea have to do with robotics and automation in Asia?

Plenty when that idea consists of building a canal to connect the Gulf of Thailand to the Andaman Sea. And with it, opening up a fast, direct, economical, and easily accessible trade route from Vietnam to Myanmar that has a combined population in excess of 250 million people, but also opens wide direct access to another billion-plus consumers from Bangladesh to India.

For many, it’s an idea whose time has come.

All of those Asian ports of call are surging economies where factories and warehouses will soon be built to meet rising consumer demands for just about everything. It’s a landscape anticipating factories large and small, and warehouses large and small, where automation and robots are inevitably bound, but as yet are rarities.

It’s a perfect scenario for a 5- to 10-year business plan for automation, which is the time frame that it will take to build the proposed $32 billion canal.

An old idea suddenly made new again
Bandied about for centuries the Kra Isthmus canal idea would probably remain in obscurity if not for China’s massive, continent-crossing One Belt, One Road project.

But lo, here it is again, and this time it’s serious with serious money from serious people. It makes all the difference when serious people see such an investment as the gateway to billions of dollars in spinoff opportunities.

King Narai of Siam was totally correct about the importance of such a canal when in 1677 he had the French engineer De Lamar scout the Kra Isthmus, the narrowest point on the Malay peninsula, where it’s a mere 27 miles from the Gulf of Thailand (South China Sea) to the Andaman Sea (Indian Ocean).

King Narai never moved on creating the canal; 17th century technology and the Kra’s imposing topography augured against the project. Over the centuries the Kra idea has come and slipped away countless times; the last in the late 1990s when Japan’s Global Infrastructure Fund (GIF) conducted a feasibility study, which estimated a cost of $20 billion.  

Today’s return of the Kra big idea is to avoid the Malacca Strait—the world’s busiest trade route (84,000 ships a year)—750 miles to the south, where it’s narrow, super busy, piracy-prone and strategically sensitive.

Eighty percent of China’s 8.5 million barrel-a-day crude oil supply passes through the Strait at the mouth of Singapore’s harbor, the second largest container port in the world. If any foreign navy were to interdict Chinese trade (oil plus containers), China would be near helpless to remedy.

Hence, the reason why China is building a navy, including aircraft carriers, subs, and yes, islands in the South China Sea. In fact, Longhao, the Chinese construction company that built the Chinese government’s controversial bases in the South China Sea is among several builders lobbying the Thai government on the Kra Canal project.

It’s reckoned that a Kra Canal would siphon off about 25 percent of the traffic now plying the Malacca Strait.

Opting for the Kra Canal and bypassing the Malacca Strait (500 nautical-mile-long waterway) would “save two to five days, cutting the cost of a 100,000-ton cargo ship voyage by about $300,000.”

“The canal would also attract vessels too big to pass through the strait, which are presently forced to take much longer routes to and from East Asia via the Sunda or Lombok straits. Using the Kra Canal instead of the Lombok Strait would save 3,500km [2,175 miles] and six days’ sailing time.”

Ship owners might gladly pay canal transit fees in light of such savings realized from the shorter, faster route to the Indian Ocean or east into the South China Sea.