Japanese company Sanyo Denki Philippines Inc. opened the P2.3-billion phase 4 of its expansion project at the Subic Techno Park (STEP) inside Subic Bay Freeport Zone on March 22.
Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) chairman and administrator Eduardo Jose Aliño said the phase 4 expansion project includes the construction of a fourth factory.
He said the project would require an additional 1,500 workers to manufacture uninterrupted power supplies (UPS), cooling fans, servo amplifiers and stepping motors.
Aliño led the blessing and inauguration ceremony held inside the company’s grounds along with Sanyo Denki Philippines Inc. chairman Chihiro Nakayama, director Koichi Uchibori and president and chief executive Hirokazu Takeuchi.
Takeuchi expressed gratitude to the SBMA for its support in the expansion plans of the Japanese company, describing the Subic Bay Freeport as the second home of Sanyo Denki. Its parent company Sanyo Denki Co. Ltd. is located in Tokyo, Japan.
Sanyo Denki Philippines, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Jan. 25, 2000 and with the SBMA on March 9 of the same year, has three factory buildings and a technology center which opened in 2019.
The company manufactures and repairs electric machineries, electric appliances, computer wares, electronic materials and all parts and accessories, sells scrap materials and has a workforce that grew to 4,851 employees as of December 2023.
The company became the top Subic locator in exports value in the first quarter of 2021, according to figures from the SBMA Trade Facilitation and Compliance Department with a freight-on-board (FOB) value of $79.5 million or almost 25 percent of the total exports from Subic from January to March 2021.
Sanyo Denki was among the very few Subic locators allowed to continuously operate during the pandemic that was under enhanced community quarantine conditions to build cooling fans for the ventilators used for patients.