Compal Restarts Construction of Production Base in Vietnam

Taipei, Feb. 23, 2010 (CENS)--With serious shortages of workers in China's coastal areas, Compal Electronics Inc., the worlds' largest contract manufacturer of NB PCs, will restart construction of a production base in Vietnam.

Compal expects the construction of the new production facility will be completed sometime in the second half of this year at the earliest. Another NB manufacturer-Inventec Corp. will begin construction of a production base in Chongqing of Sichuan Province, China after the Lunar New Year, which is expected to trigger a new wave of plant relocation in the NB sector.

Taiwan's NB sector has been growing since the beginning of this year. Compal scored NT$73.41 billion (US$2.29 billion) in consolidated sales in January, surging 161% year-on-year and up 2.4% from the preceding month. The company shipped between 4.3 million and 4.4 million NBs in January, standing firmly as the world's largest NB contract manufacturer.

Other leading contract manufacturers, including Quanta Computer Inc. and Wistron Corp., also saw substantial growth in shipment and sales in January. Quanta and Wistron shipped 3.5 million and 2.1 million NBs in January, respectively.

Compal president J.T. Chen said his company will expand production capacity in the Kunshan plant in Jiangsu province and, meanwhile speed up constructing a new plant in Vietnam. The company is now building a fifth NB plant in Kunshan which is expected to begin mass production sometime in the third quarter of this year.

Besides Compal, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's leading provider of electronic manufacturing services, has announced a US$200 million investment project to build a cellphone plant in northern Vietnam. The proposed plant is estimated to output 89 million cellphones per year.

On February 26, Inventec will break ground a new plant in Chongqing of Sichuan province. The new plant will roll out the NB models that have been marketed in China market.