Fabrinet (Bangkok Thailand), an engineering and electromechanical manufacturing services company, announced the planned expansion of its operations in Thailand with the investment of $25 million (1 billion baht) in additional manufacturing facilities, equipment and training.
A portion of the funds was used in the acquisition of Fabrinet's new 115,000 sq. ft. factory outside of Bangkok, Thailand, completed in early April. Additional funds will be used to facilitate the new factory, which will be available to customers in June 2004. In addition, construction will begin later this year to expand the new factory space into a 340,000 sq. ft. campus, increasing the company's aggregate footprint to approximately 575,000 sq. ft.
The new factories will include complete automated assembly lines for the manufacture of optoelectronic components—from fiber align through assembly—and will include a full range of test capabilities. The factories will support a range of services, including design for manufacture, prototyping, product transfer and qualification, process development and optimization, test development, assembly and fulfillment.
As part of its investment in Thailand, the company plans to hire and train over 2,500 engineers, operators and technicians to support customer manufacturing requirements. The company will provide new employees with technical training, lean manufacturing and six sigma disciplines as required for the manufacture of precision optical and optoelectronic devices for the telecommunications, data communications, automotive, data storage, industrial and imaging markets.
Fabrinet currently operates a 232,000 sq. ft. facility with over 3,200 employees in Bangkok, Thailand.
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