Daikin Industries (Thailand) will spend 1.4 billion baht to expand its production capacity of air-conditioners by an additional 634,400 units a year, the Board of Investment (BoI) said.

The expansion of Daikin's factory in Amata Nakorn industrial estate, Chon Buri, is for exports to clients in Japan, Australia, and Europe. The company is planning to hire 668 more staff.

Daikin expects to source 4.67 billion baht worth of local materials a year such as compressors and aluminium, the BoI said in its statement.

''This is a part of Daikin's ongoing investment programme in Thailand. As part of Japan's Daikin, the company already invested in five projects in Thailand for production of air-conditioners and compressors to serve the group's affiliates in Japan, Europe and China,'' it added.

Hana Semiconductor, meanwhile, will spend 522.4 million baht to raise the capacity of integrated circuits (IC) and integrated circuit testing equipment used in communication and portable devices such as mobile phones, notebook computers and MP3 players.

The company _ a joint venture of Dutch, Australian and US investors and affiliated with SET-listed Hana Microelectronics _ has also developed five projects in Thailand.

Hana aims to secure local parts such as wafers, disks, and packaging of about 2.3 million baht annually and create employment for 282 people.

The BoI said 175 projects applied for privileges in the first 10 months of 2008 with total outlays of 69.3 billion baht for products such as hard-disk drives, ICs, wafers for solar cells and light-emitting-diode (LED) lamps.