Canon will increase its investment in Asia, particularly in China, to get a bigger niche in local market, a senior Canon official has announced.

Canon's largest factory, equipped with the most state-of-the-art technologies, went into operation on April 9 in Suzhou, an economically-developed city in east China's Jiangsu province, said Fujio Mitarai, Canon global president, while attending a recent Canon products expo in Shanghai.

Covering an area of about 87,000 square meters, the 100 million US dollar factory is designed to mainly manufacture color digital compounding machines.

Asia is the major production base for Canon, which has set up 15 factories in China, Thailand and Vietnam. Products of these factories include digital cameras, digital multi-functional office system and printers, and their total output makes up 37 percent ofCanon's global total.

China's fast economic development, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, as well as rapid growth in the fields of architecture, real estate, information technology and tourism have provided tremendous business opportunities, said Yoroku Adachi, Canon China president, adding that Canon was well-prepared to compete with other multinational firms for these opportunities.

Canon moved its Asia regional marketing headquarters to Beijing in 2002 and, by the end of 2003, it had established 12 subsidiary companies and three regional centers in China. The number of Canon's sales staff has risen to 600 from 200 early last year.

As part of its endeavor to obtain a bigger market share in China, Canon plans to put forward more than 100 varieties of products for daily-life use and for commercial and industrial purposes this year.

Yoroku Adachi noted that Canon had made it a target to increaseits sales in Asia region by 20 percent and sales in China by 40 percent in 2004.

A leading imaging products and office equipment producer in the world, Canon registered sales totaling 30 billion US dollars and a net profit of 2.58 billion US dollars last year. Canon has 252 subsidiary companies with a total force of 103,000 employees worldwide.

Source: China Daily