A Chinese manufacturer of television sets is to expand into Europe by opening its first manufacturing headquarters in Port Talbot.
Tongfang, backed by £600,000 of Welsh Assembly funding, will invest £1.6m of its own finance into the facility and hopes to create 70 jobs between now and October.
Port Talbot will see production of the next generation of 4K Ultra HD TVs at the Welsh facility, and is the latest country where Tongfang has expanded its presence.
Welsh enterprise minister Edwina Hart said: “Tongfang was considering another location in Europe for this investment, so I am particularly pleased that support and funding from the Welsh Assembly helped to secure the project for Wales.”
Headquartered in Hong Kong, Tongfang employs 1,200 people across locations including the USA and Malaysia, where it manufactures flat-screen and digital TVs.
Its move into Wales is expected to reduce customer lead times, said Philip Jones, director of Tongfang UK.
“Tongfang already supplies a number of key retailers in the UK from China, and having this facility in Wales means we can offer our customers a much better service with shorter lead times,” he said.
“We have ambitious plans to ‘grow’ the business; we will initially target the UK retail market before supplying Europe, although we have received our first order from France.”