Thailand has been a hub for EMS for decades, which is tied to PCB manufacturing as part of the front-end supply chain, so the headlines I'm seeing in the news cycle this week are not surprising to me at all.
Thailand is having a capital moment
Thailand is having a "capital moment", and it's being touted as proof that the country is about to become the next great regional technology hub. The BOI has now counted 880 projects filed between 2023 and mid-2026. THECA (Thailand Electronics Circuit Asia) kicked off its annual trade show today, positioning Thailand as the hub.
Investment applications in the first quarter of this year alone came to ~$31.8 billion, about 2.4 times the same quarter a year earlier. Data-center projects requested more than 26K MW of power of which Thailand only has ~5K MW available.
The BOI publishes applications and approvals for both foreign and local direct investment, but there is no regular consolidated series tracking which promoted projects reach commercial production.
Data centers are completely dependent on intensive power and water consumption, and operate with skeleton crews while EMS and PCB manufacturers are labor-intensive. A single site here can require more than 4,000 employees.
Where the money lands decides the jobs
If the money lands as data centers, Thailand gets a fraction of the jobs those headline numbers imply, while putting more pressure on a grid that can currently serve less than one-fifth of the requested load.
If it lands as EMS, Thailand gets the jobs, but they arrive in a country that becomes super-aged by 2029, and where engineering graduates are moving into software and fintech. The bigger challenge is that neighboring countries are actively recruiting the same people who do qualify.
Thailand's semiconductor plan targets roughly 230,000 skilled workers by 2050. The problem is not that Thailand has no workforce strategy. The problem is that the investment cycle is moving faster than the workforce can be produced.
I experienced a similar situation years ago when I worked for a large EMS manufacturer. We had first gotten wind of Foxconn wanting to build a very large-scale EMS plant, and based on the size and scale of their operations in China, all of the EMS players here were extremely concerned that they would hire away all of our employees to fit out their factory. This never came to fruition, so at the time, it created a lot of headaches and emotional knee-jerking for nothing.
What Foxconn actually built here
Foxconn group is investing here now, through a subsidiary the BOI approved in December 2024 for two plants in Chonburi and Rayong. That one covers 1,400 jobs, not the wave we were all bracing for.
The first Foxconn Thailand plan never became a plant. The second became a joint venture for EV manufacturing, an approved project, and a groundbreaking in 2022. PTT has since suspended it, cut its stake from 60% to 40%, and is reported to be looking to exit. No vehicle has been produced.