Oki Electric starts power supply production in Thailand

Tokyo-based Oki Electric Industry said today that it has launched full-scale production of its new amorphous power supply unit in Thailand. The company said the power supply, manufactured by its Oki Power Tech subsidiary, is more efficient than standard systems.

The unit uses powdered amorphous material for the core of the switching transformer. Oki Electric said when the product is used in a printer, power conversion efficiency increases by 10 to 20 percent, power consumption in standby mode is reduced by 50 percent, and size is reduced by 25 percent.

The company said this is its first direct overseas site in Thailand for manufacturing power supply units.

"By expanding production capacity, we will respond to the growing demand for office equipment that we are experiencing in Japan and other Asian countries," said Akira Ugawa, president of OKI Power.

"We will be increasing our sales not only through OKI Group companies, but also through sales to third parties."

The new production site is located in a section of the Thailand plant of OKI Data, which is Oki's subsidiary in charge of the printer business.

Oki Power made its first shipment of amorphous power supply units in September, after developing a production line for printer power supply units, and started full-scale production in October.

Starting in January, Oki Power plans to manufacture power supply units for non-printer office equipment and failure analysis equipment. And in April, the company said it will increase its production capacity to 300,000 units per year with two production lines and a total of 100 employees, up from 45.