Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Vietnam Aerospace Project

UB.News/HaNoi - Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Indus­tries last week received an invest­ment certificate to build a com­mercial aircraft parts facility in Thang Long Industrial Park.

With the new $11.25 million factory, which is scheduled to start assembling flaps and metal component structures in the spring of 2009, Mitsubishi Heavy Indus­tries (MHI) is the first manufac­turer in the world to locate an air­craft-related production facility in Vietnam.

Hiromu Saito, MHI's chief representative in Vietnam, said MHI Aerospace Vietnam (MHIA V) would assemble flaps for two to eight airplanes every month, and for 10 airplanes per month starting in 2011. All of the flaps will go to Boeing 737s.

"As a result of research on var­ious nations in the Southeast Asia, we have decided to establish our new factory in Vietnam due to the availability of human resources, political stability and an appropriate industrial park," Saito told Vietnam Investment Review.

"While parts for the flaps will be either supplied from Japan or procured from neighboring countries, including Malaysia and China, in time, MHIA V will grad­ually expand local procurement in Vietnam," he added.

The new facility is MHI's sec­ond manufacturing base in Viet­nam, following an $8 million diesel generator production facto­ry in Ho Chi Minh City still under construction. MHI is also the engineering - procurement t -con­struction contractor on two large-scale power plants, the Phu My 1 and 0 Mon in southern Vietnam.

"Besides development of man­ufacturing bases in Vietnam, we are also interested in participating in the nation's infrastructure pro­jects, particularly transportation systems such as expressways and a subway in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City," Saito said.

Headquartered in Tokyo, MHI's diverse line-up of products and ser­vices encompasses shipbuilding, power plants, chemical plants, envi­ronmental equipment, steel struc­tures, industrial and general machinery, aircraft, space rocketry and air-conditioning systems.

Nguyen Van Viet, deputy chief of the Hanoi Industrial and Export Processing Zones Authori­ty (HIEZA), said MHIA V's arrival in the Thang Long Indus­trial Park is in line with Hanoi's drive to draw hi-tech and new material manufacturers as part of a municipal industrialization plan by 2020.

"This is the first manufactur­ing facility in Vietnam's aero­space industry and we believe that the facility will be the magnet to other hi-tech manufacturers com­ing to Hanoi," Viet said. Hanoi received $2.5 billion in newly registered foreign direct invest­ment (FDI) last year, making it the second largest FDI locality in Vietnam after Ho Chi Minh City.

(Source: Vietnam Investment Review)

Uni-Bros. is providing transportation service for the owner of this project