Bulletin 445 - Friday, November 6, 2009

Monterrey, Mexico,- Sanyo Energy inaugurated a solar panels plant in Escobedo Municipality where they invested US$15 million and generated around 600 jobs. Mitsuru Homma, Vice-president and member of the Board, Sanyo Electric, pointed-out the importance of the new plant in the assembly of HIT patented panels. "Monterrey plant is an important and vital production site in North America for the assembly of our HIT panels, the most highly efficient in the world", Homma said. Panasonic starts purchase-The Japanese electronics company Panasonic started yesterday buying more than 50% of Sanyo shares to turn it into its subsidiary for a price of ¥131 per share, quite below the ¥216 market price. With this agreement, Panasonic makes sure private investors will not participate in a closed deal with the three main Sanyo stockholders: Goldman Sachs, Daiwa Securities and Sumitomo Mitsui.

Source: El Norte

Chihuahua, Cd Juarez,-Three new maquiladora companies in the medical field have announced their establishment in Ciudad Juarez next February, generating all together 1,500 direct jobs, Maquiladoras Association informed. These are Chinese, Canadian and US companies which have already decided to establish in Ciudad Juarez, Soledad Maynez Bribiescas, AMAC Chairwoman, declared. She explained that one of these companies will manufacture, another one will be devoted to packing and the third will assemble a complete medical products kit. She further said that the three companies will all together recruit 1 thousand 500 people, a figure which will be part of the 17 thousand new jobs forecasted to be generated by maquiladora industry in the first quarter of 2010.

Source: El Diario

Monterrey, México,- After a difficult decision on where to install a new plant, if in India or somewhere in Mexico, the Finnish company Luvata chose the latter and started operations yesterday in Finsa Guadalupe Industrial Park, where they invested US$40 million. John Peter Leesi, CEO, Luvata, said that establishing here was the best decision they could make for their expansion plans. "In these difficult times, we decided to invest and get the plant running where we considered was the best choice. "At the beginning we considered India and Mexico, but decided to establish here due to all the incentives found; in addition, we are close to our customers", Mr. Leesi said. Luvata produces copper pipes for air conditioning industry and some of their main customers are in northeast Mexico, such as Carrier, Lennox, JCI and Frigus Bohn, among others.

Source: El Norte

Mexico,- In spite of the effects of the economic crisis in Mexico, Tyco Electronics will post a 10% growth in Mexico in 2009 and therefore in 2010 they will continue with their expansion plans all over the country and will keep on investing to reach, in addition to large corporations, small and medium companies, Jorge Silva, General Manager, pointed-out. "This year the demand of solutions for intelligent buildings and data centers, among others, has grown, and we will therefore post a 10% growth, while we thought we would not grow this year", Mr. Silva said. Jorge Silva also assured that Tyco will reinforce their technological innovation strategies in their Ciudad Juarez and Hermosillo plants, where they jointly employ close to five thousand people.

Source: El Financiero

Mexico City,- Even if Nikon has been in the Mexican market for over 50 years now, only until 2009 they decided to open offices and a service center where consumers may send their photography equipment for service and repair. Nikon has more than 16 thousand employees all over the world, to be joined by employees in the new offices in Mexico. Nikon was founded in 1917 in Japan under the name Nippon Kogaku Kogyo, as a result of the merge of several small companies devoted to manufacturing optical instruments and in 1946 changed its name to Nikon. "This is a very ambitious project; the first direct operations office established by Nikon in Latin America, which makes Mexico even more important for the company, because from here we will start taking trends to implement them in the rest of the continent", said Gamaliel Soriano, Sales and Marketing Manager for the firm in Mexico.

Source: El Diario

Mexico City,- Kenworth Mexicana (Kenmex), trucks assembler and subsidiary of the US corporation PACCAR, will increase production in the last two months of the year. Samuel Means, President, said that Kenmex went from manufacturing 27 trucks per day to 29 this month and they will close the year producing 30 trucks in December, of which 50% are for the export market - especially the USA - and the remaining 50% will be sold in the domestic market. Up to August 2008, 60 truck were produced per day. Mr. Means said in an interview that even if there are signs of improvement, trucks assembly is one of the industries that have suffered the severest consequences from the world financial crisis, especially in Mexico where sales have dropped more than 60%. He further said that it will take at least until 2012 to recover the same sales levels as those in previous years.

Source: T21

Guadalajara, Mexico,- To launch their new CRV model, Honda invested around US$6 million on their production line at their plant in El Salto, Jalisco. Ruben Resendiz, Public Relations Director for Honda de Mexico, explained that this investment was mainly made in equipment to assemble the new unit. "We have been making some adjustments, that have required some investment, it has not been much as in other years", Mr. Resendiz explained. Around 200 units are currently assembled in this Honda plant every day and they are expecting to close the year with close to 48 thousand units, compared to 50 thousand last year, i.e. a 2 thousand units drop.

Source: El Norte