Danish group opens new Sai Gon facility

Sonion Viet Nam Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the Danish Sonion group, opened a new production facility yesterday in the Sai Gon Hi-Tech Park in HCM City's District 9.

Located on 11,000 sq. m., the facility will produce micro-acoustic and electro-mechanical solutions for hearing instruments and professional audio and mobile terminals, including silicon microphones based on micro-electric mechanism system (MEMS) technology.

The factory is Sonion's fourth in the world, with the others located in China and Poland.

The number of employees is expected to double by the end of the year, making the HCM City factory Sonion's largest facility worldwide.

Sonion Viet Nam's general director, Tjerk Veenstra, said the company had spent US$25 million to build the factory.

All of its products will be exported to Asia, North America and the EU.

The company targets export turnover of $30 million for the year.

The company has 1,200 employees who produce receivers, speakers, microphones and other micro-electro mechanical components.

Prime location

The chairman of Sonion Viet Nam's management board, Jorn Morkeberg Nielsen, said before choosing Viet Nam for its new operations base, Sonion analysed and visited a number of countries including Brazil, Ukraine, India and Thailand.

"What we found here in Viet Nam was a high level of security and stability, cost efficiency, very good labour skills and attitude, a balanced labour law, and good and improving infrastructure," said Nielsen.

The Danish ambassador to Viet Nam, Peter Lysholt Hansen, said Sonion was a young but leading company with expertise in information and communication technologies, particularly in the acoustics area. "Sonion's investment in a new hi-tech production facility in Viet Nam is on the one side proof of the fast-developing Danish-Vietnamese commercial relations," he said, "and on the other side another of the fast and impressive development of the Vietnamese economy."

Nguyen Dinh Mai, head of the Saigon Hi-Tech Park authority, said Sonion's production facility would create more jobs, promote exports and at the same time raise awareness of hi-tech industries' contributions to the country's economy.

He hoped that Sonion Viet Nam would contribute more significantly to the development of research and hi-tech technologies in the country. (VNS)