Japan’s Bandai is set to invest 400 million Philippine Pesos (approx. 744 million yen/$9.5 million) in the construction of a new factory in Batangas. As the company behind Gundam action figures, Bandai will build the toy manufacturing facility within the 485-hectare LiMA Technology Center business park. Construction on the 10,000-square meter factory is scheduled to start this October, with operations hopefully starting within the next year.
Marcus Andre C. Ong, a marketing officer for LiMA, says the new facility will be used for manufacturing action figures, small toys that come in capsule vending machines, and other amusement items. Ong says that they are not yet able to reveal the plant’s output capacity, however all the products it does produce are for export only, with none to be used for domestic sales. That doesn’t sound very fair to action figure-collecting Gundam fans in the Philippines, does it?
The factory itself will be run by Bandai (Philippines), Inc., a new local subsidiary of the Japanese Bandai Namco Group. The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) has declared the LiMA industrial park as a special economic zone, meaning companies there, which will include Bandai, can benefit from income tax holidays and exemption from duties and taxes on things like imported equipment.
[via ABS CBN]