Electronics Production |
Eastern Europe burning hot for LCD-TV manufacturing
During the last few months a number of Asian companies have invested heavily in production facilities across Eastern Europe for the fast growing LCD-TV market. Only for the last month evertiq has reported about ten new investments in this category. A huge majority of the LCD-TV brands are manufacturing their own products in-house.
Many of these companies put their manufacturing facilities in Eastern Europe for the nearness to the exploding market for flat TVs in Europe. Eastern Europe is today by many considered as the most cost effective alternative, not only because of the lower wage but also since there are many industry parks were the government has implemented tax reliefs for companies establishing their operations there.
Most of the LCD technology product owners are chosing to keep their manufacturing in-house to secure their product development and to keep the quality- and supply chain monitoring. Yesterday evertiq reported that Quanta Computers are transferring manufacturing from it production partner Flextronics to their own newly built plant in Germany.
As late as yesterday evertiq reported about the Japanese electronics firm Funai is planning to build an LCD-TV plant in Poland with 1500 employees. Among the other large investments we find IPS Alpha, hiring 2000 at its new plant in Czech Republic, Sony Europe, hiring 3000 employees at its new plant in Slovakia, LG Philips investing 560 million dollars at its new Poland plant. The Polish EMS provider Assel is according to evertiq's sources one major supplier to LG Philips in Poland. In addition to the named companies Toshiba and TPV will invest $43 million and €101.2 million respectively in Poland. The Korean LCD-TV maker Humax is planning investments of €30 million as in Poland as well.
