BATANGAS – Fujio Mitarai, Chairman and CEO of Canon Inc, flew to the Philippines this Thursday to officially open a Canon Manufacturing Facility in Tanuan, Batangas.
Located around 60 kilometers south of Manila, the state-of-the-art plant was set up to serve Canon Business Machines Philippines (CBMP), one of four Canon companies here in the Philippines and is dedicated to laser printers. It’s headed by Kazuhiko Yamada and was established on December 2011, marking its 4th year of operations in the country.
The plant has been running since 2013 and has already produced a whopping 3 million Canon laser printers. The company originally intended to introduce the plant to the press on the same year but was postponed due to Typhoon Haiyan.
Yamada shared that CBMP managed to grow its revenues up 30% from last year to date and is expecting to sustain an annual growth rate of up to 20%. As for production targets, Canon is planning to ramp up to 5 million printers for 2016 and 10 million in 2018.
The country’s exceptional economic strengths and young talented workforce were key reasons why Canon decided to set up shop here in the Philippines, says Mitarai, while Yamada added that having English-speaking employees onboard was critical to how CBMP reached these notable milestones early in its operations.
With 3,700 people now working at CBMP, Canon is expecting to have a total headcount of 4,700 by 2018 in response to demand, which is welcome news to PEZA Director General Lilia de Lima, who also graced the opening with a keynote explaining how Japanese foreign investment has helped thousands of Filipinos.
De Lima shared that Canon has already invested Php 20 Million for the CBMP plant, creating a total of 32,000 jobs (including downstream jobs), ultimately supporting 160,000 Filipinos families in the process.
De Lima went on to invite Canon’s business partners who attended the launch to establish a manufacturing base the Philippines. While she admitted that infrastructure could be better, she said that spending in the sector is on track to be doubled and touted the country’s excellent workforce, its strategic location in global trade and having earned a Generalized System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) status, a ranking which allows developing country exporters to pay less or no duties on their exports.
“This makes us the sweetest spot for investors in the region,” she adds.
De Lima then turned to Mitarai, hoping for Canon to open more manufacturing plants in the Philippines for its other products like cameras, camcorders, photocopiers, semiconductor equipment and medical equipment, among others.
Currently just occupying 8.5 hectares out of the total 30 hectares of land Canon has rented at the First Philippine Industrial Park, the electronics giant seems to be primed for a possible expansion. However, Yamada shared with adobo that all expansion plans will have to wait till 2018 when market conditions and business performance can warrant the move.
