- Japanese TV companies set up assembly operations in Wales in the 70s and 80s. Most left. Now it's the turn of the Chinese.
- Tongfang manufactures under the Seiki brand and has great success in US budget markrt. Now starting to hit the shelves in the UK. It also makes a cheap 4K TV for Argos sold as Bush and a retro TV for Argos (Bush).
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/busines...turing-7461356

The folk there applying for jobs in this new assembly plant should be careful. I started work for a Chinese firm in 1998 that had newly opened. In fact I was one of the first in the door and my employee number was 18! All the Chinese wanted was a foothold in Europe and within four or five years they'd moved everything to the Czech Republic where wages were much lower. It was all lies they spun.

Surely you can't judge the decision of one company as representative of another company in Wales in 2014 some 16 years later just because it is Chinese-owned? By way of contrast, Volvo Cars has been expanding heavily in Belgium and Sweden since it was bought by a Chinese comapny.

They shouldn't give it a moments thought if they are looking for a job. No company no matter where it is from will guarantee jobs or guarantee they will stay in the country.

If the company only wanted a foothold in Europe why did they not start in the Czech Republic first? Obviously business plans changed after they started up as no company wants to move to one country and then another without a good reason.

For got to say - am glad some company believes in the UK and wants to put some money into it. Always good.

They're selling 39" 4K Seiki TVs in Asda at the moment, they were reduced from £599 down to £299.
Here's a piccy of the box.

... and yet when a British company (Cello) has been providing work for British workers, even if they are just a screwdriver plant, all they get from this forum is a slagging off.

Good to know that there are now two factories in the UK which will be assembling TVs.

They get 'slagged off' (in your words!) because they 'claim' to be British designed and British built TV's - where they are just cheap crappy Chinese imports screwed together in the UK.


Good to know you have the sense to use the word 'assembling'

Nothing new really, good news for employment of course but this all happened in the 1980's when the UK government bribed, I mean encouraged Japanese tech companies to set up in Wales and (presumably) Slough/Basingstoke.

That's what my initial sentence said. I think the M4 corridor was not led by grants.

Agreed, it's good news to have a second TV factory in the UK. I expect when most TVs are opened up, a lot of the components will hail from China, even for brands like Sony and Samsung.

It's more a question of the quality of the components, not actually here they come from - and even more so for Chinese manufacturers repeatable quality (it's common for Chinese to provide good quality that meets the specification for the first batch or two, then to start supplying sub-standard later on).

Yes, sorry I didn't word my response very well - you'd summed it up in the original post.

Wasn't sure about the M4 lot though and most are still there as HQ's

Seiki will have to improve though, their intitial super cheap 4K TV's all get pretty awful reviews even considering how cheap they are (and the Bush branded ones) - would be nice if they can up the quality and produce something that isn't just another mega cheap supermarket quality LCD TV.