By Meryl Kao /
Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) yesterday said it would invest US$919 million to establish a manufacturing facility in McKinney, Texas.US$108.5 million of this would be used to acquire factory buildings, Lite-On said in a statement.The McKinney site, spanning more than 650,000 square feet (60,387 square meters), would support manufacturing, operations and engineering functions, it said.
The Lite-On Technology Corp logo is pictured at the company’s booth at the Computex trade show in Taipei on June 2.
The investment is expected to expand the power supply maker’s North American footprint and enhance its responsiveness and service capabilities for customers and partners across North America, it said.It would also help the company meet growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and energy-related applications, it added.
The project is expected to create at least 600 jobs and represents one of the largest private investments in McKinney’s history, the company said.“This investment marks an important milestone in Lite-On’s global growth strategy,” company chairman Tom Soong (宋明峰) said in the statement.“The new site will not only strengthen our presence in North America, but also create greater synergies across our global operations by aligning regional and global resources, providing a strong foundation for future growth,” Soong said.The investment would also strengthen Lite-On’s global competitiveness and support its long-term growth as AI infrastructure development and the global energy transition reshape industries, he said.The McKinney facility expands on Lite-On’s existing operations in Plano, Texas. The company said in March its US operations would add capacity for higher-power products, including power racks, with production expected to begin as early as next year.Benefiting from strong demand for high-end server power supplies and high-efficiency backup battery units for AI and cloud computing, Lite-On’s consolidated revenue for the second quarter rose 21.4 percent quarter-on-quarter and increased 30 percent year-on-year to NT$52.71 billion (US$1.64 billion), the highest quarterly figure since the third quarter of 2018, the company reported on Thursday last week.Cumulative revenue in the first half of the year was NT$96.1 billion, a 25 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said, adding that it remains optimistic about the second half of the year.
