British tech firm investing $20 M more for expansion

MANILA, Philippines - British technology firm Dyson Electronics Pte. Ltd. is investing $20 million this year to expand its operations in the Philippines as it remains bullish on the company’s growth prospects in the country.

In a press briefing yesterday, Dyson’s chief operating officer Jim Rowan said the investment is on top of the $50 million it poured in for its manufacturing and assembly facilities in Calamba, Laguna which started operations in April last year.

“We expect further investments this year and next year also. For this year, another $20 million, which will be for another production line by the end of the year,” Rowan said.

Dyson’s Calamba manufacturing facility currently has three lines capable of producing six million motor units a year.

The products it assembles locally are hair dryers and cordless vacuum cleaners, most of which are exported abroad.

Having been in the Philippines for only more than a year, Dyson sees bright prospects for growth opportunities in the country.

“The Philippines is really interesting right now, they really appreciate technology and good design, so we’re very bullish that the Philippine market will be a big consumer market for us. So we see good sales generation from the Philippines,” Rowan said.

Rowan said Dyson’s Philippine manufacturing operations currently accounts for about 20 percent of its total global output. Aside from the Philippines, Dyson has existing design and manufacturing facilities in UK, Singapore, Malaysia, and China.

“One of the reasons we chose the Philippines was because we think first and foremost, we can get talent. We felt we can get good engineering talent within the Philippines and the English language proficiency in the Philippines was also a factor that we took into consideration because that meant that we can train up those engineers very quickly. And then access to the supply base. There’s quite a strong supplier base in the Philippines so we could immediately come in and tap into some of the suppliers already existing here to save money from logistics cost,” he said.

Rowan said Dyson is happy with the business conditions in the country despite having seen a change in administration over its more than a year of operations in the Philippines.

“We’ve seen no changes at all, it has been business as usual for us all throughout that change. We continue to engage with PEZA and DTI and they continue to help us in getting what we need,” he said.

According to Rowan, Dyson is increasing its workforce in its Calamba manufacturing plant to 400 by yearend and to 500 by 2018 from the current 320.

As of end 2016, Dyson operates in 75 countries, holding 7,500 patents with nearly 7,000 people under its portfolio.