Canon Inc. plans to spend about 15 billion yen to build a new inkjet printer plant in Thailand amid soaring demand in China and the rest of Asia.
- Canon's share of the global inkjet printer market came to 23% last year.
Canon's second Thai inkjet printer factory will be located in Nakhon Ratchasima, 170km northeast of the existing facility in Bangkok, and employ some 5,000 workers. It is due to come online in October 2011. Churning out mostly low-priced products, it will have an annual production capacity of 5.5 million units, pushing up Canon's total inkjet printer output 40% to 27 million units a year.
Canon currently makes inkjet printers in Thailand and Vietnam. It produces 6 million middle- and top-of-the-line models in Thailand, with two Vietnamese factories churning out 13.5 million affordable offerings.
Although output is unlikely to keep up with demand for low-priced printers, personnel are growing scarce in Vietnam. The company opted for Thailand because of an abundance of workers and a concentration of parts manufacturers nearby. Expansions at the Bangkok facility will hike production there to 8 million units a year, up from 6 million.
The new Thai facility has room for another building and assembly line. So if demand for inkjet printers continues to grow, a second line could begin operating around 2016.
Canon was the No. 2 inkjet printer maker worldwide last year with a market share of 23%, according to U.S. research firm IDC. Driven by the booming Chinese and Southeast Asian economies, global demand is expected to hit almost 91 million units in 2013, swelling 18% from 2009.
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