Toshiba Plans $39 Million Factory in East Jakarta

Shirley Christie. The Jakarta Globe, Jakarta - 18/10/2011

Toshiba Home Appliances, a local subsidiary of Toshiba of Japan, is planning to build a 3 billion yen ($39 million) washing machine factory in Jakarta this year, the company said on Tuesday. 

The Tokyo-based company, which designs and manufactures home appliances, will start construction on the 18,000-square-meter plant next month, with the project expected to be done by the middle of next year. It will begin production by the end of 2012. 

“Capital investment in the plant over the next year is expected to reach some 3 billion yen and the plant will have some 350 employees,” Toshiba said in a statement published on its Web site. 

Toshiba officials in Jakarta declined to elaborate. 

The company will build the new plant adjacent to the site of its LCD TV production facility in East Jakarta Industrial Park. 

Toshiba makes more than 70 percent of its sales in Japan. But the company says it has embarked on a globalization push in its home appliances business, and hopes to have 50 percent of its sales come from outside Japan by 2015. 

The group expects sales of washing machines in Southeast Asia to increase by more than two-thirds to 9.2 million units in 2015, from 5.5 million units last year. 

Indonesia is Toshiba’s largest and fastest-growing market in Southeast Asia and currently accounts for 30 percent of total demand in the region. That is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2015, it says. 

Sales of twin-tub washing machines in Indonesia in 2010 were around 1.8 million units and are estimated to grow by 23 percent this year. 

“Twin-tub models now account for more than 60 percent of washing machines sold in Indonesia,” the company said. 

The new factory will double Toshiba’s global production capacity of twin-tub washing machines to one million units by 2015, from 500,000 units last year. The washing machines will be distributed to other Southeast Asian countries, Japan and the Middle East, Toshiba said. 

The two most popular Toshiba products in Indonesia are LCD TVs and notebook PCs.