Aussie brand fuels growing Chinese market

The Australian caravan industry can relax – for a short while anyway.

China’s Daide Group says it wants to learn our industry and RV lifestyle first before they sell us Regent caravans made in China. But rivals remain sceptical.

The primary reason behind China’s giant Daide RV Group’s just-completed bargain basement purchase of the respected Regent brand is not to “disrupt” our domestic industry.

Rather, it’s to absorb and copy our caravan building techniques and incorporate them in Chinese-built caravans to meet the country’s mushrooming demand for inbound RV travel, according to Regent’s new chief executive, Wei Zhu.

“Daide wants to learn from Australia, particularly to understand its caravanning lifestyle and how to transplant this into China,” explained Mr Wei of Daide’s just-completed purchase of the 30 year-old nameplate and recently refurbished manufacturing facility in Campbellfield, Victoria.

He had just emerged from a meeting with one of a string of Australian RV industry suppliers, all keen to embrace new opportunities.

“The rapidly growing and increasingly affluent Chinese middle class now wants to go camping and caravanning,” he said. “The infrastructure is now being rolled out rapidly to allow this to happen and thousands of caravans need to be built to meet this demand.”

There are currently fewer than 200 campgrounds in the whole country although this should rise quickly, with 10 Chinese provinces planning to build another 730 campgrounds by 2020, while the first industry standards for campgrounds are due to come into force in December this year.

From the current production of just a few thousand RVs a year, Chinese caravan production is expected to soar to meet this demand and is predicted to eclipse Australia’s total RV market of just over 20,000 units within five years.

Another major development this year has been the decision by a number of Chinese provinces to allow people to tow trailers and others will quickly follow them.

“We believe this lifestyle choice will expand rapidly,” said Wei, who has lived in Australia since 1994 and comes from an engineering and boat-building background before being headhunted by Daide to run Regent.

“The Chinese RV industry is preparing to meet this demand, “ he said. “Daide has been researching the market worldwide since 2009 and its purchase of Regent is an important first step.”

Daide is clearly positioning itself to capitalise on the Chinese RV boom, with the Group’s stated aim on its website of “striving to become world largest and highest grade of RV manufacture”.

The Australian, Canadian and US markets are on its radar “to expand market access and after-sales service networks”, with sales targets of 1000 camper trailer in 2014 and total sales of 10,000 in the following five years comprising 6000 motor homes and 4000 camper trailers and caravans.

Regent Caravans, rumoured to have been snapped up with empty order books for just $500,000, is Daide’s first purchase of a caravan manufacturer outside of China and will be used as a pilot for future acquisitions.

“The Chinese countryside is very similar to that of Australia,” said Mr Wei. “This makes the unique design and construction of Australian caravans important for us to understand in this early development phase of inbound Chinese tourism.

“American caravans are too heavy; European caravans aren’t strong enough, but Australian caravans have a reputation for high quality and strength and we need to understand how they are built and then incorporate these qualities into caravans made in China.”

Mr Wei would not be drawn into a timeline on when complete caravans could be made in China and shipped to Australia under the Regent brand.

“Initially our purchase of Regent is about understanding Australian caravans and the caravan lifestyle. Later, when we increase caravan production in China, it may be cost-effective to send some components here for assembly, but there are no hard plans to import complete Chinese built caravans at present.

“Regent will remain an Australian-built caravan in the foreseeable future and at this stage it will be kept completely separate to what is happening in China.”