THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 18, 1996 TAG: 9609180498
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 42 lines
Panasonic will unveil its new customer call center in Chesapeake's Battlefield Corporate Center today.
Panasonic, a division of electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., has hired 150 people, mostly as customer service agents. The Chesapeake facility will answer questions by telephone about electronics and home appliances under the brand names of Panasonic, Technics and Quasar.
Panasonic has already invested about $15 million in the center, said Chesapeake Economic Development Director Donald Goldberg.
It plans to hire about 400 people over three years, Goldberg said. Pay for most employees starts at $7.50 an hour, he said.
``We will add people as the demands on the center increase, as we suspect they will,'' said Bill Pritchard, a Panasonic spokesman. ``We're in a ramp-up phase. We'll be increasing the traffic the center has over the next few months.''
The company's new facility sits on 11 acres of land at 611 Independence Parkway. The building will occupy 50,000 square feet of space, but the company has room to expand.
Several company executives andother officials plan to attend the grand opening. They include Kirk Nakamura, chairman and CEO of Matsushita Electric Corp. of America; Don Iwatani, president of Matsushita Consumer Electronics Co.; and Mark Kilduff, deputy director of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
Panasonic opened its new operation in August. It began training its employees this summer at the local Tidewater Community College center on Cedar Road.
Matsushita is well known for its subsidiaries, such as Panasonic. The conglomerate bought MCA in 1990 for $6.6 billion, the single largest purchase of a U.S. company by a Japanese company to date.
Matsushita makes electronic and home appliances under the National, Quasar, Technics and Panasonic brands. It owns a controlling interest in the Victor Company of Japan, which manufactures the Victor and JVC brands. by CNB