At today?s BDA press conference in Beijing, Sony DADC announced the start of Blu-ray Disc (BD) production in China and Australia.

According to the group's president, Dieter Daum, facility expansion at the Shanghai production site is nearing completion and production start is scheduled for mid December 2008. At the Sydney site, BD replication is scheduled to start in February 2009.

The sites will offer replication of both BD25 and BD50.

"China represents a massive and strategically important market and our investments are intended to support Blu-ray?s establishment in this territory," comments Dieter Daum.

"Sony DADC is the leading Home Entertainment supplier of Hollywood studios in the Chinese market, serving all Majors. Concerning Blu-ray, we already provide our customers with a BD Authoring facility in Hong Kong and we will soon provide the same service in Sydney. Currently we are expanding our Shanghai and Sydney facilities for Blu-ray Disc production" explains Dieter Daum.

The production floor space of the Chinese site will be expanded to 13,000m2, the floor space of the Australian site will be expanded from 12,150m2 to 13,500m2.

Sony DADC's stage goal is to reach a monthly BD25 and BD50 production capacity of 500,000 units in Shanghai by December and a monthly production capacity of 1,000,000 units in Sydney by February.