The competitiveness of many Hong Kong companies could be at risk because of their reluctance to switch to new or advanced manufacturing materials.
The warning comes from Lui Sun-wing, chairman of the New Materials for Manufacturing Committee of the Asian Industrial Technology Congress '99.
One of the aims of the Congress, or AITC as it is known, is to reverse this trend and convince local manufacturers of the benefits of adopting the most advanced materials available in their specialised fields, said Dr Lui, who is also director of the Hong Kong Productivity Council's Materials and Process branch.
'When it comes to new materials, Hong Kong manufacturers at times need more encouragement, sometimes they pay less attention to new materials that become available,' he said.
'Many of them have more of an interest in manufacturing technologies. But the message we want to get across is that, by adopting new materials, you can sometimes enhance the effectiveness of your applications, even develop whole new products.' One reason for this lack of interest was that few new materials for manufacturing were actually developed locally, he said.
'In Hong Kong, because of our environment, we are obviously not developing new or advanced materials ourselves,' Dr Lui said.