The new building will be located at the corporation’s Hirooka Office and is being built to house RD and production groups for commercial and industrial printing.
Today Seiko Epson Corporation announced that it would be investing ¥16 billion ($14.2 million/€12 million) in constructing a new building on the campus of the Hirooka Office, which is located in the city of Shiojiri, Nagano. This building, which will be named Innovation Centre Building B, will house a factory for prototyping and volume-producing large commercial and industrial printing systems. It will also contain a test laboratory for digital textile printing. The new construction is a part of Epson’s mid-term strategy to develop its printing solutions business.
The new building will span 37, 650sqm, with the factory and test lab being housed on the first floor, and the second and third floors given over to office space.
Construction is scheduled to commence in the summer of 2018, and it is expected to become operational by March 2020.
Epson expects the new Innovation Centre Building B to yield benefits by reinforcing its research and development capabilities and production technology in the commercial and industrial printing domain. It also expects to benefit from greater operational efficiency by bringing all relevant departments under the same roof.
As an R&D and production centre for core devices used in the printing solutions business and as an inkjet printer planning and design centre, the Hirooka Office works closely with Epson’s production sites worldwide. It shares the advanced production technology and the expertise it gains through the development and production of core devices with Epson’s overseas sites to help maximize manufacturing capabilities across the Epson Group.
Epson already has under construction at the Hirooka Office a new factory that will produce the company’s state-of-the-art PrecisionCore printheads. That factory is scheduled to be completed in the first half of the 2018 fiscal year.
Epson has designated commercial and industrial printing as a key business area in its Epson 25 mid- to long-range corporate vision, Epson will build Innovation Centre Building B in response to the expansion of key markets. In the signage market, Epson is expanding and upgrading its line-up of printers that deliver spectacular image quality for things such as indoor/ outdoor sign boards. In the digital textile printing market, Epson anticipates rapid expansion because, in addition to having a comparatively low environmental impact, digital systems offer print shops the ability to handle short-run print jobs at low cost and with a fast turnaround.
Epson declares its commitment to advancing its original technologies and to delighting customers by exceeding their expectations with products and services based on original core devices.