RI to get new battery plant

RI to get new battery plant

TOKYO (AFP): Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., its subsidiary Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. and an Indonesian partner will build one of the world's largest dry battery plants in Indonesia, a spokesman says.

Total investment in the plant, part of the Japanese companies' joint venture with Indonesia's PT Paditraktoris, is estimated at more than four billion yen ($40 million ), a Matsushita Battery spokesman said.

The plant is to be completed by next May, with full-scale production slated for the middle of 1997, the spokesman added. Its annual output will be one billion batteries.

The plant will be built on a 100,000 square meter (1,076,000 square foot) site in an industrial park in Cibitung, Bekasi, east of Jakarta, the spokesman said.

It will be constructed by PT Matsushita Gobel Battery Industry, owned 30 percent each by Matsushita Battery and Paditraktor and 25 percent by Japan's largest consumer electronics maker Matsushita Electric, he said.

The joint venture currently produces about 400 million manganese dry batteries a year, the spokesman said.

About 70 percent of the products to be made at the new plant will be exported to Asian and Middle Eastern countries and the United States, he added.