Hanoi - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Vietnam will launch an aircraft component assembly factory in Vietnam in June, local media reported Wednesday.

The state-run newspaper Lao Dong quoted Stanley A Deal, Boeing's deputy chairman of Asia-Pacific sales, as saying the factory would produce wing flaps for Boeing 737 aircraft.

The company is a subsidiary of Japan's Mitsubishi corporation.

The 7-million-dollar factory, located 15 kilometres north of Hanoi, has been under construction since January 2008.

It will initially produce flaps for two to eight aircraft per month, ramping up to 10 per month in 2011, and will employ
200 workers when it reaches full capacity. The factory is the first aircraft-related production facility in Vietnam.

Vietnam's industrial export economy has lost tens of thousands of jobs since last autumn in the global economic slowdown, but industrial production was still up a modest 2.5 per cent in January and February over the same period last year. (dpa)