As released on Nikkei Asian Review, Toshiba Lighting & Technology will withdraw from the China lighting market and sell off its consumer lighting business to the Chinese Konka Group for an estimated 8.79 billion USD and focus its future activities onto the Japanese market. Toshiba’s decision is part of a re-structuring process and increasing income.


In the past Toshiba had different production facilities in China, particularly in Fujian, Jiangsu and Hong Kong. All these facilities will be sold and an estimated number of 1.000 workers will move to Konka. However, Toshiba will keep its production facilities for more profitable applications such as automative lighting at Kunshan (Jiangsu) with a number of about 300 employees.
 
As Toshiba has released, it will move it consumer lighting production to Japanese facilities and domestic contractors in order to get closer to consumers. Toshiba Lighting's overall sales came to 143.6 billion yen for the nine months ended December. The China consumer lighting business on the other side generated ab annual sales of only a few hundred million yen which made the business unprofitable.
Source: http://asia.nikkei.com