Dell to open second Malaysian plant
The company says it will open a second Malaysian manufacturing plant in March to cope with the growing demand for PCs in high-growth markets like China and India.
The new plant will be located in the northern state of Penang. Dell plans to hire an additional 600 workers for the new plant, said Simon Wong, managing director of Dell's Asia-Pacific Customer Center (APCC).
"The fact that we are opening a new manufacturing plant and hiring new people is an indication of our resolve to expand operations," Wong told reporters Monday.
He said the new center will be able to produce more than twice the capacity of the first plant, which was set up in 1995. The latter produces about a million PCs a year.
Dell's APCC supplies PCs, laptops and servers to the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, China, India, Korea and Australia. Wong said the Asia-Pacific region accounted for 7 percent of Dell's global revenue last quarter.
The new plant will initially manufacture laptops before expanding to desktops and servers later in the year. Bluetooth-equipped laptops are also set to be manufactured at the new plant later this year, Wong said. Bluetooth is a wireless data-transmission standard.
CNET Malaysia's Sreejit Pillai reported from Malaysia.