Friday, April 18, 2008

Business: Hitachi Chemical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. enhances production capacity

Hitachi Chemical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. enhances production capacity of high-density, high-layer printed wiring boards

Tokyo (BUSINESS WIRE) - Hitachi Chemical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (Head Office: Singapore: Managing Director: Lee Wee Koon; paid-in capital: US$ 19.5 million; hereinafter "Hitachi Chemical Singapore"), a consolidated subsidiary of Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Tokyo; CEO and President: Yasuji Nagase; paid-in capital: 15.4 billion yen; hereinafter "Hitachi Chemical")(TOKYO:4217), has recently invested approximately 3 billion yen to build a new production facility of printed wiring boards (PWBs) with a gross floor area of about 19,000m.

The facility will be situated in the Loyang Plant and will undertake inner layer processing. The purpose is to expand its business by securing the market for high-density, high-layer PWBs, which are widely used for information and communication equipment such as servers and routers, portable music players, and notebook personal computers.

Hitachi Chemical Singapore has been operating two production sites, which mainly produce standard multilayer PWBs for automotive and communication market: Loyang Plant (mainly outer layer processing), and Bedok Plant (mainly inner layer processing).

Due to the recent decline in product prices and the continuous rise in the price of raw materials including copper, it has become necessary to shift the focus of production to more value-added, high-density PWBs and high-layer PWBs, whose market is expected to expand. Under such circumstances, in order to promote more sophisticated products, which is the company's policy, it has been decided to build a new plant to carry out inner layer processing on the premise of Loyang Plant, where outer layer processing has been performed.

The Hitachi Chemical Group restructured and consolidated the domestic PWB business on April 1. The Sales Division, Operation Division, and Development Division are combined to form Hitachi Chemical so that the overall business strategy is unified and customer service is integrated.

Production is integrated into Hitachi AIC Inc. to further improve production efficiency. In the overseas PWB business also, it is intended to provide products promptly that meet customers' requirements through cooperation and segregation of products between Hitachi Chemical Singapore and Hitachi Chemical Co. (Taiwan) Ltd., which is a subsidiary of the Hitachi Chemical that produces PWBs mainly used for automobiles and digital consumer appliances.

(Outline of Hitachi Chemical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd) (As of April 1, 2008) Corporate name: Hitachi Chemical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Location: 32 Loyang Way, Singapore 508730
Capital: US$ 19.5 million
Foundation: November 10, 1972
Equity holder: Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd. 100%
Representative: Lee Wee Koon, Managing Director
Description of business: Production and sales of printed wiring boards
Amount of the investment: About 3 billion yen
Full-scale operation of the new plant: From April 2009 Hitachi Chemical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
Jenny Tan, +65-6548-0808 Senior Manager Human Resource Dept.

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