Furukawa to Build Heat Treating Factory for Rock Drill

Furukawa Rock Drill, one of core subsidiaries of Furukawa Co., Ltd. to produce construction and mining machinery, will increase the self manufacturing rate in heat treating process for rock drills to 80% from current 20%. The firm now constructs a new factory specialized for heat treating process at Takasaki plant in Gunma Prefecture, Japan with about 1 billion yen of investment. The new factory will complete in December 2006 and start operation after April 2007.Furukawa Rock Drill plans about 5 billion yen of capital investment for Takasaki plant during 3 years to March 2009, where the firm processes rock drills. Firstly the firm reinforces forming and heat treating processes with about 2 billion yen of expenditure. The floor space of the new heat treating factory would double to 1,600 square meters from the present. The firm could achieve 80% of self heat treating ratio thanks to the new factory within fiscal 2007 ending March 2008.The firm plans to introduce large sized machine tools into the open space of the existent building after the new heat treating factory completes. Takasaki plant becomes to hold 135 machine tools after the introduction, where there exist 120 machine tools at present. The firm will invest about 1 billion yen for the machine tools addition.