Toshiba unit to expand RP operations

MANILA, Philippines - Toshiba Information Equipment Philippines Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Digital Media Co., is investing an additional P110 million to expand its operations in the country.

The expansion comes on the heels of other electronic firms reducing their working hours and manpower as a result of the drop in global demand due to the financial crisis.

The new investment will translate to more jobs in the electronics industry. The expansion project will employ 618 people who will work on two shifts per day.

Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) Director General Lilia B. De Lima said she is happy over the expansion plans because it will help mitigate the effects of the financial crisis by providing additional employment.

De Lima said the country should now focus on positive news like additional investment and not on jobs lost in the industry. The fiscal and non fiscal incentives allocated to firms factored in the decision of Toshiba to widen its operations in the country.

In the approval given early this month, De Lima said that because this is a new project by Toshiba Philippines, it will be given the full incentives by PEZA for new projects.

The multi-million investment will be used for the production of solid state devices (SSDs) at its manufacturing plant in Laguna Technopark Special Economic Zone starting this month.

SSDs are hard-disk drive-like devices that store data on flash memory instead of on a revolving magnetic disk. 

Toshiba is a leading global producer of SSDs and expects to boost its worldwide share in the PC notebook and enterprise drives.

Toshiba’s initial export projection is $54.916 million annually. Major markets include the US, Europe, China, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

With the approval of its new expansion project, both hard disk drives and solid state drives will now be produced at its Laguna facility.

Toshiba Information Equipment Philippines Inc. has been a PEZA-registered company since September 1995 manufacturing hard disk drives in its Laguna Technopark Special Economic Zone facility in Sta. Rosa, Laguna.