Matsushita closes UK fax machine factory affecting 46 jobs Richard WilsonMatsushita Electric Industrial is closing its UK-based facsimile machine production plant next February.
The facility at Reading employs around 46 people.
It seems the facility produces an older design of facsimile machine which has become less popular in the market. There has been a fall in “demand for single-function facsimile machines due to changing consumer preferences toward multi-functional models. This is a trend fuelled by increasing use of PCs and the Internet,” said the company in a statement.
Matsushita also said there was “an urgent need to restructure its global facsimile manufacturing locations in the face of intensifying price competition due to competitors' overseas production shifts”.
The need to move to areas of lower cost manufacture is also behind the closure of the factory in Reading as well as a sister plant in Singapore whichis also being closed.
Production of facsimile machines in the UK and Singapore will be shifted to the Philippines “to enhance cost competitiveness,” said the company.
The Reading facility, which was established in 1989, is owned by Matsushita Graphic Communication Systems UK a subsidiary of the Japanese electronics giant. This subsidiary will cease trading after February 2002.