Shimano has opened a new plant in the Philippines. The facility, which reportedly represents an investment of JPY3.5 billion (around €30 million), is located at the First Philippine Industrial Park (FPIP) in Santo Tomas, Batangas. The investment is a 70-30 joint venture of Shimano with the First Philippine Holdings Corporation (FPH), a holding company of the Lopez Group and Sumitomo, one of Japan's biggest conglomerates. The new plant employs 1,000 workers and will make bicycle components mainly for the export market. The European Parliament has recently voted to include the Philippines in the European Union's Generalized System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) program. This will exempts bicycles made in the Philippines from duty when imported to European market. Between January and October 2014, i.e. before the GPS+ rating, the Philippines' bicycle exports stood at 702,618 units, up 8.76 percent from the same period in 2013. These figures are expected to increase considerably after the inclusion of the Philippines in the EU's GSP+ program.

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