XP Power has opened an office in Shanghai, China to provide technical and commercial support to its customers and to strengthen its ties with local manufacturing partners. The office will have seven staff by the end of Q2, 2006 including a components engineer, design verification and test engineer, quality manager, and sales support personnel.
Further expansion is expected later in the year as the company moves more of its manufacturing resources to Asia. XP Power now has seven manufacturing partners in Asia who produce both ac-dc and dc-dc power supplies for the company's customers worldwide.
The company has also announced a 50:50 manufacturing joint venture with Fortron Source, a leading power supply manufacturer based in Shanghai. Fortron Source has been a contract manufacturing partner of XP for four years and operates several power supply manufacturing facilities in China.
"Far from seeing China as a threat to our business, we see growing opportunities for a combination of low cost, high volume manufacturing in Asia, coupled with local product configuration and support near our customers in Europe and the US. This delivers the best possible value in terms of both price and service," commented James Peters, XP Powers' Deputy Chairman.
