Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc. will add a 1,500-ton injection molding press to one of its Indianapolis-area plants as part of a $2.9 million capital improvements plan. The expansion is designed to triple production of its 31-inch television cabinets and introduce a 32-inch cabinet, a spokesman said.
Thomson announced March 24 the plan to increase cabinet production as a means of bringing more work in-house. The improvements also involve upgrades to its printed circuit board manufacturing line, said spokesman David H. Arland.
Television cabinets as small as 20 inches are manufactured at the plant.
At the same time, the company is completing the sale of that plant to a contractor and will lease the largest portion of the building's floor space back for manufacturing, according to Arland.
Thomson also plans to build a 500,000-square-foot product distribution center in Indianapolis to handle both foreign and domestically manufactured products, Arland said. A site for the Indianapolis-area location has not been chosen, but should be operational by April 1996.
The warehouse replaces a facility in Atlanta the company is closing, Arland said, and will add to warehouse space already next to Thomson's television assembly plant in Bloomington, Ind.
Thomson makes and markets RCA digital satellite systems and GE-brand consumer electronics. The French company moved its U.S. headquarters from the Sherman Drive plant to Carmel, Ind., last year.