Panasonic plans to up Lithium battery output in Indonesia-Nikkei

Sept 4 (Reuters) - Japan's Panasonicrp (6752.T) plans to increase by 70 percent its Indonesian production capacity for lithium batteries, the Nikkei business daily said.

The company intends to spend about 5 billion yen ($59.25 million) to construct a building at its factory in West Java province and raise the factory's annual output to 850 million units from 500 million units, the paper said.

The project, which is expected to be completed in November and begin operations by the year-end, will be used to make disposable cylinder batteries for gas meters and rechargeable coin batteries for personal computers and other equipment, the business daily reported.

Panasonic also manufactures lithium batteries at a plant in the Osaka Prefecture and at a facility in the U.S. state of Georgia. ($1=84.39 Yen) (Reporting by Rachel Chitra in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)