Knowles' P1.6B facility to hire over 3K workers

CEBU, Philippines - World's leader in micro-acoustic and human interface solutions maker Knowles Electronics (Philippines) Corp. is set to hire over three thousand employees this year, following the  grand opening of its P1.6 billion (US$28 million) manufacturing facility at the Cebu Light Industrial Park (CLIP) in Lapu-Lapu City.

Knowles Philippines president Joseph Emmanuel Liwag announced yesterday that from the current 507 total employees, the Chicago-based manufacturing firm will be hiring at least a total of 3,400 people within this year.

The company which announced its entry to the Philippines, through its Cebu plant in 2012, has completed its 220,000 square foot facility which was inaugurated yesterday and graced by Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) director general Leila de Lima.

The Cebu plant will be doing mostly on the assembly of the company's mobile, handset, laptop speaker products. Accordingly, skills needed for the plant will require primarily English speaking people, engineers, technicians, and highly educated individuals.

Knowles Philippines is so far the single largest manufacturing foreign direct investment (FDI) that entered Cebu at least this year. It's the 17th locator at the 62-hectare CLIP.

"Knowles Philippines supports two businesses units--sound solutions and specialty components--and will manufacture labor-intensive acoustic products. These products include dynamic receivers, speakers and speaker boxes for mobile phones, laptops, and gaming devices, as well as hearing instruments, in-ear earphones and hearing aids," said Dan Giesecke, vice president for Dover Communications Tehnologies, the mother company of Knowles.

In his speech read by de Lima, President Benigno Aquino III said that Knowles' entry to the Philippines will encourage more big ticket foreign investments to set up plants in the country.

Aquino assured the American investor that the Philippines will continue to enhance and develop its human resource pool through investing massively in education and training.

Knowles Electronics is a well known manufacturer of microphones, speakers, and other components for global hearing aid industry, present in 11 countries around the globe. It is a subsidiary company under the Communication Technologies Division of Dover Corporation, a diversified industrial manufacture with eight billion dollars in annualized revenues from stand-alone operations. /JMD (FREEMAN)