Third New Base Established in Vietnam to Increase Wire Harness Production Capacity

As a member of the Furukawa Electric Group, Furukawa Automotive Systems Inc. (Headquarters: Inukami-gun, Shiga Prefecture; President: Shigenobu Abe) manufactures and sells wire harnesses and other onboard automotive functional products. We recently established a new company in Vietnam as a production base for the Japanese and North American markets and to increase wire harness production capacity. This move is intended to meet the growing demand for wire harnesses equipped with aluminum wires (aluminum wire harnesses) designed to address the need for lighter vehicles among Japanese automobile manufacturers, our core customers.

The Japanese automobile manufacturers who constitute our core customers are now expressing greater demand for lighter products in response to the heavier vehicle weights that have coincided with the addition of advanced safety equipment and electrification. As our solution to this issue, aluminum wire harnesses, which combine our aluminum wires and alpha terminals, have been well-received by customers for their technological and cost advantages. This recognition has led to increasing orders for our aluminum wire harnesses and to the emergence of this technology as the industry’s de facto standard. In order to meet this demand, we established a third base in Vietnam, where our main production bases for aluminum wire harnesses are currently located. We will utilize resources from the two existing bases (in Ho Chi Minh and Ben Tre) to achieve rapid startup, and have scheduled the launch of operations for August 2021.