MHI's New Turbocharger Plant in Thailand to Begin Mass Production

The new plant serves as a plant of Mitsubishi Turbocharger Asia Co., Ltd. (MTA), a wholly owned turbocharger manufacturing subsidiary established by MHI in January 2008 within the Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate, located approximately 80 kilometers southeast of Bangkok. The plant has capacity to produce 3 million cartridges p.a. (per annum) and undertakes a task of supplying cartridges globally, which has been so far performed exclusively by the Main Plant of MHI's General Machinery & Special Vehicle Headquarters in Sagamihara, Japan. The Thai plant also has capacity to produce 500,000 turbochargers p.a. as finished products, and undertakes sales and handle local marketing activities as well as technical and quality assurance services.

The new plant, construction of which began in April 2008, has a 60,000 square meter (m2) floor area on 147,000 m2 property. The plant started production equipment installation this January and began trial production in March. Initially the plant is operating with 130 employees, and staff will be expanded to 700 once production reaches full momentum.

Although market of turbochargers has been sluggish since last year under the influence of the economic and financial crises after continuous market expansion worldwide, the demand is expected to increase sharply again over the medium to long term due to implementation of intensified emissions controls from 2010 and more stringent fuel efficiency requirements.

With the addition of the new Thai plant, MHI has now completed a structure enabling swift customer response worldwide. While benefiting from avoidance of currency fluctuation risks and from flexible production shifting among its three production bases, MHI looks to establish a production structure for 6.9 million turbochargers p.a. and to secure a 25% share of the global market.