Molex’s plan to expand its production base is expected to create at least 200 more jobs in the hi-tech manufacturing sector.

Molex established its first factory in Vietnam in 2007, and the expansion helped satisfy high demand for the company’s products, which are used in many fields such as smartphones, TVs, household appliances, and medical and testing equipment.

Joe Nelligan, CEO of Molex, said the expansion of the factory in Hanoi would speed up the company’s development plan in terms of scale and production capacity in Asia Pacific.

Molex’s factory will be equipped with modern machines such as robots, high speed plastic molding machines, stamping machines, plating machines and automatic assembly machines with mechanical processing units and a quality assessment laboratory.

Molex is present in more than 40 countries and contributes to technology transformation in many fields such as data science, industrial automation, healthcare, 5G mobile network platform, cloud computing and consumer electronics.

Vanti Fan, CEO of Delta Electronic, said that Vietnam is a destination for investors from many countries, including the US, China, South Korea and Singapore. 

Vietnam has a well trained labor force with professional skills and the country is creating a development strategy for the 4.0 industrial revolution. It is also a member of many free trade agreements including the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

He said that Vietnam is a strategic market for the company. It hopes to be among the top 5 automation solution providers in the Vietnamese market by 2027.

Shi-Chi Ho of Techman Robot said that Vietnam maintains high GDP growth rates and many corporations have shifted their production from China to Vietnam.

Asia has the highest robot usage rate (54 percent) in the world. China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are using robots the most. These countries also have high levels of investment in Vietnam.

TMX, a consultancy firm, has released a report on average business costs in Asia, which focused on assessing the competitiveness of nine countries.

The report pointed out that Vietnam is one of the markets with the lowest operating costs in the region, just higher than Cambodia and Myanmar.

Nguyen Thai