THE 170 strong workforce at the Mitsumi electronics plant at Mallow, Co Cork, will be reduced by 80, the company announced yesterday. It said increased competition from the Far East had forced rationalisation in order to ensure the survival of the plant, which was established in 1990.

Up to now, the plant's main product line has been keyboards for the computer industry which were supplied mainly to Apple Computers. It is understood that the initial stage of keyboard manufacture will be transferred to the Far East while other production processes will continue at the Mallow plant.

"Due to a continuing reduction in the market price for personal computers, suppliers like Mitsumi are facing ever increasing levels of price competition. It has been necessary to rationalise Mitsumi Ireland in order to manage effectively the business when faced with such price pressures.

"The resulting rationalisation programme is expected to commence in April. The company will endeavour to ensure that as many as possible of the job losses are on a voluntary basis," the statement said.

Despite the need for lay offs, Mitsumi said that an expanded customer base and new product lines, including "mice", floppy disk drives and CD Rom would consolidate the future of the Mallow operation. Yesterday SIPTU called on the IDA to avert the redundancies and to safeguard future jobs at the plant.

In a separate development yesterday, the Apple Computer plant in Cork announced that it would extend its shutdown over the holiday weekend by two days.

Since last Christmas Apple has reduced its temporary workforce at the Hollyhill plant by 300 people. Most of these jobs are seasonal. According to the company, the extended closure is for operational reasons only.

Apple employs 1,300 people in Cork and is a major contributor to the local economy.