Kingston Technology (hereinafter referred to as Kingston) was established in 1987 and set up headquarters in Fountain Valley, California. It has more than 4,000 employees worldwide and is committed to the R&D, testing and manufacturing of memory products, flash storage devices, and gaming peripheral products. In 2020, Kingston has been ranked as the world's leading company in memory for the 18th consecutive year, and has the largest market share in the global memory module market.
Kingston, a multinational company with operations all over the world, currently has more than 30,000 marketing locations in the world, and has manufacturing plants in the United States, Taiwan, as well as Shanghai and Shenzhen in mainland China. It also has regional headquarters in London of the U.K., a logistics center in Dublin of Ireland, and Asia Pacific manufacturing and marketing headquarters in Hsinchu of Taiwan.
By observing Kingston's global layout, what are the reasons that this company builds a production base in Taiwan and also selects Taiwan as its headquarters for the Asia-Pacific market?
In 1997, Kingston recognized the potential of the global and Asia-Pacific information industry market. When exploring emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific, Kingston chose to set up the ""Far East Kingston Technology Company"" in the Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan.
At the beginning of establishing the Taiwan subsidiary, Kingston was dedicated to the manufacturing field. After entering the Taiwan market, for only 3 years, Kingston California Headquarters moved its Asia Pacific business and marketing headquarters to Taiwan in 2000. At the same time, it relocated its key R&D projects to Taiwan and made Taiwan as the center to set up sales and marketing offices in Asia-Pacific regions.
At present, Kingston has more than 650 employees in Taiwan. Due to geographical proximity to Asia-Pacific fabs and emerging markets and the ability to vertically integrate industries, Taiwan has closely linked with fabs and collaborated with suppliers to develop new products. Taiwan really plays a key role as an Asia-Pacific operations center.
Why chooses Taiwan? In fact, Kingston chose to set up a production line and office in Taiwan because of ""people"". Taiwanese talents are not only superb, but also possess high-strength resistance to pressure, the ability to conduct continuous innovation, and a high degree of enthusiasm for work. Especially from the younger generation of employees, you can feel that their enthusiasm is the most important part of business operations.
In recent years, under the US-China trade conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. expects the manufacturing industry to return. However, it is actually difficult for Kingston. For a manufacturer to return to America, it needs to have good engineers to build and operate factories, but high-quality engineers basically need to have several years of work experience and American talents in this area have a 20-year gap. It is not easy to recruit a large number of high-quality engineers that have same level as TSMC owns. The ICT industry, semiconductor environment, and talent pool of Taiwan, which have been well-built in 30-40 years, are unmatched and unsurpassed by many developed countries in a short period of time.
For Kingston, although Taiwan is a small island, it has a fairly complete, mature and high-quality supply chain covering the upstream, midstream and downstream in raw materials, equipment, and production.
Kingston highly affirms Taiwan's logistics efficiency. Taiwan has small geographic area and complete infrastructure. Because of that, when the equipment is breakdown and the raw materials are in shortage, supplier can provide the most immediate support and service in the shortest time, which only takes 2 to 3 hours to drive from the north to the south. This is the greatest advantage of Taiwan, which cannot be compared by other country and is the value of Taiwan's supply chain.
In fact, the suppliers in Taiwan are not only Kingston’s partners in the manufacturing field, but also good partners in R&D and market strategy formulation. It is worth mentioning that over 50% of Kingston’s global turnover comes from Taiwan’s supply chain partners.
Since 1997, Taiwan has played a unique position in Kingston's overall strategy. Taiwan is Kingston's first choice for manufacturing related projects, such as production processes and system development, and is also the base for it to explore the U.S. and Mainland China markets. In particular, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, Kingston immediately chose to move its manufacturing base from Mainland China to Taiwan to support American production capacity.
Especially, expecting that the US-China trade conflict and the epidemic will not stop or end in the short term, Chairman of Kingston, Mr. Mike Chen, said that the United States and Mainland China have become two independent economies and all the business operators can no longer see the international market from the concept of globalization in the past. Taiwan, with superior geographic location, high-quality talents, complete infrastructure, and high administrative efficiency, is best choice for Kingston and other multinational companies to invest in the next 10 to 20 years and also the best starting point for exploring the U.S., Mainland China, Europe, Africa, and so other key markets.
Continue to focus on Taiwan as the center in group’s global deployment
Looking forward to the future, considering the full of uncertainties in economic and trade environment, Taiwan will continue to be the center in global layout and operational planning for Kingston. Chairman Mike Chen specifically mentioned that under the epidemic, Kingston’s offices and factories in Taiwan are still operating normally, because of the local culture and the self-discipline and prudence of Taiwanese people. Compared with international, this is quite difficult to achieve, and also highlights the advantage of uninterrupted supply chain of Taiwan.
In the post pandemic era, Kingston will maintain close interaction with Taiwan’s suppliers, partners and customers, and use this as a cornerstone to respond the changing market trend and customers’ needs.
Source： Department of Investment Promotion, MOEA
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