Textron Inc, based in Providence,which appointed an executive earlier this month to help
boost sales in China, will open its first factory there that makes
screws to assemble computers, cellular phones and video games.
The plant will open later this month in Wuxi, China, and will make the so-called fasteners mainly for customers in the country,
Textron said in a statement. Textron’s fastener business last year
had $1.65 billion in sales, or 15 percent of total revenue.
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The company on March 4 named Ee Soon-Kiong to the new post of president of all Textron’s China businesses to build plants,
develop customers and find distribution centers for its products.
Textron also makes Bell
helicopters, Cessna airplanes, auto parts, golf carts and tools.
“China will be one of our principal growth markets for the balance of the decade and beyond” for fasteners, Jake Hirsch,
head of the fastener business, said in the statement today.
The Wuxi plant will employ 55 people and will make screws for an increasing number of electronics manufacturers in China, Hirsch
said. The industrywide production of fasteners in China has tripled over the last decade, spokesperson, Susan Bishop said.
Textron has two other plants in China, which opened in 1996
and 2002, that make auto parts. Less than 1 percent of Textron’s $10.7 billion in sales last year came from China, Bishop said.
The fastener business has 80 factories in 17 countries. It
had 2002 pretax profit, excluding some costs, of $72 million,
giving it a 4.4 percent profit margin.
Bloomberg News
