Toshiba announces plan to build LCD TV plant in Poland

Toshiba Corp. announced on September 13 that it would set up an LCD TV manufacturing and sales company in Wroclaw in southwestern Poland, in September, in an effort to strengthen its European LCD TV business.

After reaching a plant construction agreement with the Polish Financial Department yesterday, the Japanese vendor held a joint ceremony in Warsaw, Poland. Under the deal, Toshiba will wholly fund the capital of 100 million yen, and the new plant is scheduled to commence operations in August 2007. Toshiba plans to hire nearly 1,000 new employees for the Polish plant located in an area of 226,500m2.

Toshiba is rolling out LCD TVs for the European region in the United Kingdom, but as demand from the European LCD TV market is predicted to pick up from 8.7 million units in 2005 to 33 million units by 2009, it has decided to set up a new company in the local area. The company plans to invest roughly 6 billion yen ($51.08 million) in the new facility over the next five years, with the aim of setting up its second TV production base. Its combined target annual capacity from both the UK plant and the new plant is 3 million units for 2009.