Health essentials manufacturer Medtecs International Corp. Ltd. of Taiwan disclosed plans to infuse $1.9 billion to develop an “industrial town” that will house all its investments in the Philippines.
Medtecs International is the world’s leading provider and distributor of personal protective equipment and a trusted multi-national PPE stockpiling solutions provider to governments and group purchasing organizations around the world.
Medtecs International chairman Clement Yang said the investments would help the Philippines in its job generation efforts, with a projected employment of close to 125,000 in the next seven years.
Medtechs’ industrial town will house production facilities for electric vehicles, personal protective equipment and integrated textile manufacturing using tropical fibers, particularly abaca, bamboo and banana.
Yang said the firm was keen on filling the missing gaps in the country’s textile supply chain such as yarn production, spinning, weaving, including the production of recycled polyester textile, which is a mix of polyester with recycled materials from post-consumer bottles.
He also floated the possibility of setting up a facility for the production of nitrile gloves which is being produced in Cambodia as part of the planned PPE hub.
Medtecs also announced the start of commercial operations for the production of melt-blown non-woven fabric/material—the critical filter medium used in medical-grade face masks within the Medtecs Compound in Mariveles City in the Freeport Area of Bataan.
The project costs about $600,000 with monthly capacity of 25 million facemasks manned by 15 full-time employees.
The Board of Investments said the planned investments of Medtecs are included in the Strategic Investment Priority Plan and are eligible for incentives under the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act, including the processing of green metals such as nickel for EV batteries.
BOI managing head Ceferino Rodolfo said highly-desirable projects with minimum investment of P50 billion or at least 10,000 job generation may avail of incentives for up to 40 years.
He said the BOI would link Medtecs to relevant local players in the EV assembly/production and nickel mining companies and provide manpower assistance through an existing partnership with the Commission on Higher Education on industry-academe collaboration.
The BOI is also assisting two Taiwanese electronics companies based in the Philippines in their search for human resources, through the BOI’s Academe Industry Matching program, offering the same for Medtecs to match its labor needs with universities and colleges.