Yaskawa starts producing servos in the UK

Yaskawa has started to produce servo drives at its Cumbernauld plant in Scotland. It has made "a considerable investment" in the plant to set up the dedicated production and testing facilities for its Sigma range of servos.

The company says that it needs extra servo manufacturing capacity to meet the demand for these products in Europe.

The company, which claims to be the world`s biggest manufacturer of drives, already produces AC inverters at the site. In the past two years, it has tripled its output to 18,000 inverters a month.

The Scottish factory covers 10,000m2, and could be expanded to three times that size.

• Yaskawa plans to cut 1,000 jobs - representing around 11% of its global workforce - by March 2003. The move is in response to the slow demand for its products, especially in Japan, which is expected to lead to a loss in the financial year ending in March 2002.