Sony plans $97M battery plant in Singapore

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- Electronic News, 8/16/2007

Sony Corp. announced this week plans to establish a lithium ion polymer battery plant in Singapore, which is set to be the company's first in the southeast Asia region.

Sony, which is based in Tokyo, Japan, plans to invest $97.97 million (150 million Singapore dollars) in the operations. The plant is scheduled to start operations in August 2008, Sony said. The company said that the batteries made at the plant will be used in cellular phones and shipped to Sony customers worldwide.

To be housed on Sony's existing facility in Tuas, the plant will have a built-up area of about 12,200 square meters, or about 131,319 square feet. When the plant is fully operational in 2010, it will employ about 500 employees, with a monthly capacity of 8 million units of lithium ion polymer batteries.

Lithium ion batteries have been the source of many headaches for Sony over the past year. Due to a manufacturing defect, Sony-made lithium ion batteries made for laptop computers have been shown to be prone to overheating, which has triggered massive recalls worldwide from computer makers including Dell Inc., Apple Inc., Lenovo Inc., Acer America Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

Cell phone batteries have also been a recent source of woe, with Nokia recalling 46 million Matsushita-made cell phone batteries this week.