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Published on April 2, 2008

It will set up a company and plant in Thailand as part of the expansion.

MHI is upping its production because of rapidly increasing demand for turbochargers arising from the widening adoption of tighter emission controls around the world.

To help it with the additional production capacity, MHI will build a specialised plant at the main plant of its General Machinery & Special Vehicle Headquarters in Sagamihara, which serves as the "control tower" of its global operation.

The company will also establish a new manufacturing company in Thailand and expand its plant in the Netherlands. With this tripolar production structure encompassing Japan, Europe and Asia, MHI will achieve the capability to respond promptly to demand from customers worldwide, it said in a press statement.

The total outlay, including land, is about ¥40 billion (Bt12.5 billion).

At the main plant in Sagamihara, MHI will take over 75,000 square metres of an adjacent property that until now has been home to a parts centre operated by Shin Caterpillar Mitsubishi.

The new production plant will have 33,000 sqm of floor area. The aims are twofold: to establish an effective and coherent production/distribution structure, from acceptance of parts and material to processing, assembly and shipment, to introducing new production lines enabling the capacity increase, while simultaneously integrating existing lines located separately.

Under this initiative, annual production capacity in cartridges will increase by 800,000 units to 3 million a year; the cartridge is the core portion of a turbocharger and includes the turbine rotors, compressor wheels and bearing units.

Final assembly capacity will also be expanded, by 500,000 units to 1.4 million a year. The main plant will also strengthen its support to other bases as the mother factory and design centre of development, design and production technologies.

The new production base planned in Thailand will produce 2.5 million cartridges a year and will also support MHI's main plant in Sagamihara by producing and supplying major turbocharger components and parts to the company's global production bases.

MHI has already secured 144,000 sqm of property within the Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate, near Bangkok. It has also completed the establishment of Mitsubishi Turbocharger Asia, a wholly owned local subsidiary, and is now constructing a production plant with 60,000 sqm of floor area.

The new Thai plant will also have the capacity to produce 500,000 turbochargers a year as finished products, and it will undertake sales and handle local activities in marketing as well as technical and quality assurance services.

MHI Equipment Europe (MEE), MHI's wholly owned subsidiary in Almere, the Netherlands, which functions as the company's production base in Europe, will strengthen its ability to respond to demand in the European markets, home to many of MHI's largest customers.

Specifically, MEE's production capacity in turbochargers will be increased by 800,000 units to 2.8 million a year, to be achieved by expanding its production plant by 6,900 sqm.

The Nation