Published: June 13, 2008 12:10 am            

Sony finalizes Blu-ray expansion plans

Indiana delegation signs agreement in Tokyo that adds 85 jobs to plant

TERRE HAUTE — Sony DADC will create 85 new jobs while investing $113 million to expand its nearly 1 million-square-foot Blu-ray disc manufacturing and distribution facility in Terre Haute, state Secretary of Commerce Nathan Feltman said Thursday.

Feltman, along with Dieter Daum, executive chairman of Sony DADC Global, inked a deal Thursday morning in Tokyo. It was part of the state’s six-day Japanese trade mission. Gov. Mitch Daniels did not make the trip because of concerns of flooding and storm damage in Indiana.

The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Sony DADC up to $655,000 in training grants and up to $975,000 in performance-based tax credits. Daum flew from Austria to Tokyo to sign the deal, Feltman said.

“It is a fantastic opportunity. I believe the 85-job number is a conservative number,” Feltman said Thursday in a telephone interview from Tokyo. “Given where the market is going in terms of Blu-ray technology winning out the format over HD DVD, there is likely future opportunity to grow the work force given the demand.”

Feltman said the training grant is much higher than the usual top end of $250,000 typically granted by the state for training assistance. Feltman said Sony sought to move some state dollars into training costs to help their project.

“They have a huge training budget, it is over $1 million a year. When we think about what we are doing in the state to support companies that are on the very leading edge of technology, those are the kind of jobs we want in our state — high-paying, high-skilled jobs,” Feltman said.

“That is why we shifted a lot more to the training funds, which was important for winning this opportunity,” he said.

The new jobs at Sony include operators, technicians and engineers. The positions average $43,000 annually in salary, said Shelley Klingerman, marketing manager for Sony DADC.

Sony DADC employs about 1,180 workers in Terre Haute and is Sony’s only Blu-ray Disc manufacturing facility in the United States. The Terre Haute site currently produces 425,000 Blu-ray discs in addition to compact discs, DVDs and UMDs. Blu-ray discs are high-definition, high-capacity media discs.

“Based on the past experience with manufacturing in Terre Haute, the selection of this facility for the expansion was logical. We are thrilled with the support of the state of Indiana,” Daum said in a news release.

Since Blu-ray disc manufacturing began in Terre Haute in May 2006, the company has produced more than 100 million Blu-ray discs in its manufacturing facilities in Indiana, Austria and Japan. By October, the three facilities combined will have more than doubled its Blu-ray disc manufacturing capacity of 21 million discs per month to 47 million discs per month, according to Sony.

Sony will expand its Blu-ray disc mastering and replication operations and expand its packaging and distribution center to handle the increased volume, Daum said.

Sony was one of more than 20 companies a six-member Indiana delegation will meet during a trade mission that began Monday. The delegation will return Saturday.

“It is important to build a relationship with the decision makers, which in this case are in Austria and Tokyo,” Feltman said. “They are the ones who will ultimately decide where new investments occur. You don’t learn about those opportunities and you don’t get to build those relationships unless you get on a plane and make the effort to talk with folks and build relationships. In a global economy, that is what it comes down to.”

Since 2005, Indiana officials have made trade missions to Japan four times. During that period, Japanese companies have invested nearly $1.5 billion in Indiana and created nearly 5,500 new jobs, Feltman said.

In total, more than 220 Japanese companies operate in Indiana and employ more than 40,000 Hoosiers.

After the state’s 2007 trip to Japan, Toyota Boshoku Corp. decided to locate a new seat-frame production and assembly facility in Princeton, creating more than 300 jobs. After trips to Japan and Taiwan in 2005 and 2006, Indiana became home to a new Toyota plant in Lafayette, a new Honda plant in Greensburg that will open this fall and employ about 2,000 people and suppliers to those companies, such as TS Tech and Tomasco. Indiana ranks first in North America in foreign investment for manufacturing jobs, according to a 2007 study from IBM Global Services.



Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

        

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