Woa, trendy gray slate and glass facade. Too bad, no balcony. Looks a little claustrophobic.
How to sell at this location? Aiyo, whose project might this belong to? Dum Dum!
Upon closer inspection, haha, silly me, this is a flatted factory.
Located in the industrial estate of Kaki Bukit, this spanking new building smells nothing like what flatted factories are suppose to even look like!
Wow, me impressed.
To me, flatted factories are suppose to look something like this :-
Or like this :-
Then I realised that JTC has divested a portfolio of their flatted factories to Mapletree, who will become the REIT manager for this project. Ie privatised the management of flatted factories. You can read more about it here.
Built in the 1970s, flatted factories were built to house light industries (ie not heavy pollution causing industries) near to housing estates. The rationale was for these factories to gain access to a ready pool of labour residing in the housing estates nearby.
They were flatted so as to maximise land area usage. Why build only 1 factory in the same land area when you can house factories like you build HDB flats? Build more factories so the business can grow and the economy can flourish! That was the drive back in the 70s.
Erm, so what am I doing in the middle of an industrial estate?
Took this fellow (below) for a car wash. This special car wash is suppose to be good for the paint work of the car after it's undergone a special high-heat sealant treatment to seal in the gloss of the paint. So no need to polish car for the next 1.5 years bla bla bla.
Of course that wasn't my idea, but I must admit it was worth the price paid. The car looks perpetually polished and shiny without being overly glossy. I don't like dull paints on cars.
But car paint work isn't on my mind as I write this.
With Mapletree taking over the management of the flatted factories, I wonder if they will jack up the rental for the paint sealant company who already has numerous foreign workers doing the car wash job. Even the receptionist is not local. She speaks accented English, but is polite (to a fault), knowledgable, patient and efficient on her job. And she speaks without grammatical errors. So polite was her service that I wondered if the company had sent her for customer service courses!
The car washers are not local either. Only the technical guys in charge of performing the actual task of sealing the paint are. Ie the locals take the more tech-savvy, higher value-added jobs.
What to do, the boss said. Nobody wants to do manual work in Singapore, and everyone demands high pay. Foreign labour has been a boost for him, just that he is fussy about who he selects in the vast pool of foreign labour. The receptionist sure was a gem. But his hands are tied as there is a limit on the total number of foreign workers he can hire (fixed at a % of his total workforce) so his workers often have to work long hours to make up for the lack of labour, and also to keep his business going. "How to turn away customers who drive here all the way? And they are usually only free on weekends."
Mr Boss is not without a heart though, he keeps the first Sunday of each month free so that his workers all get a day off.
And now, he is unsure if the rent on his factory space is going to go up further. He set up shop in this industrial area under assistance from the government under the JTC scheme. He knew it was going to inconvenience his customers as they had to drive all the way to this industrial estate, leave their car and wait while the cars are serviced. There is absolutely no recreational area here (not even a coffee shop) that one can go to kill time.
My estimated waiting time according to the polite recep was 3 hours.
But the boss had no choice. Rent, his biggest expense, was affordable under the scheme. So he had to grow his business through competitive rates, offering innovative products, market his services to car owners, and ensuring that service was friendly and good to keep customers coming back.
When I told him about the spanking new factory pictured above "woa very nice hor? So impressive!" he said "Aiya, for a business like mine, no use to make the place so nice! Clean, big and airy can already. Air con for what? Must pay and pay for everything - aircon water electricity salary rent...... And gow-ment don't allow me to hire more foreign workers to help me. Must work till I die la." he said as he pulled his industrial safety mask over his face.
Me? I just hope he keeps his prices as reasonable as they are 12 months down the road. Else I'll just live with dull paint.
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