Japanese electronics company Panasonic reportedly plans to move its digital camera manufacturing from Japan to China in spring of 2015.
The company's production lines in Fukushima, Japan, will stop operation.
The Fukushima plant has an annual output of 1.5 million digital cameras, which is about half of the global sales of Panasonic. Due to the devaluation of the Japanese yen, Panasonic is considering moving parts of its large home appliances manufacturing back from China to Japan. However, in the digital camera sector, Panasonic continued to see losses attributing to the shrinking of the global market. Therefore, the company hopes to improve the situation via Chinese centralized production.
Prior to this, Panasonic said that the company would complete enterprise structure reforms within the 2014 financial year ended March 2015, and it is important for the company to revive the digital camera business.
In the 2013 financial year, Panasonic sold 3.24 million digital cameras, ranking sixth among manufacturers worldwide. However, the company saw operating losses over two consecutive years. By moving the digital camera production from Fukushima to the Xiamen plant, the company aims to improve cost competitiveness with centralized production.