Japan’s Nidec Corporation plans to expand its investment in Vietnam
to 1.5-2 billion USD from now to 2015, with the focus on the
manufacturing of car spare parts and robots, Nidec Chairman Shigenobu
Nagamori has said.
In an interview granted to Tuoi
Tre newspaper during his market research tour in Vietnam, Nagamori
said Nidec is investing in 30 countries worldwide, and has established
nine factories with a combined investment capital of 800 million USD in
Vietnam alone.
Nidec has designed plans to conduct product
research and development — the phases which were once done in the US
and Japan before going to producers, along with opening plants and
workshops in Vietnam .
The research-development
model has been applied in the corporation’s plants in the Tan Thuan
export processing zone and is being carried out in the Ho Chi Minh
Hi-tech Park, according to the Nidec executive.
However, he said, this model needs the Vietnamese government’s
assistance in human resources training and preferential policies to
become productive.
The executive spoke of the
importance of recruiting excellent Vietnamese students to work for
Nidec’s research and development centres and hi-tech manufacturing
plants in Vietnam.
He also talked about the development of
the supporting industry in the future, mentioning the fact that his
factories in Vietnam still import components and spare parts from
China and Thailand.
The Nidec executive said his corporation
has taken the supporting industry as an important factor for
considering investment expansion in Vietnam.
Nidec’s
upcoming strategy aims to enable Vietnamese businesses to produce all
necessary spare parts of a product in the long run.
In the short
run, it will be increasing Vietnamese businesses’ participation in the
corporation’s production chain to 50 percent from the current 20
percent, according to Nagamori.
Nidec corporation’s nine
companies in Vietnam are employing more than 20,000 workers. All
together, they make revenues of 800 million USD annum.
Five of
the companies are located in the Saigon Hi-tech Park, namely Nidec
Sankyo VN, Nidec VN Corporation, Nidec Servo VN, Nidec Copal VN and
Nidec Seimitsu VN Corporation.-VNA