Shibutani attended the opening ceremony on 12 July, along with Daizo Ito, managing executive officer of Panasonic Corporation in Japan, concurrently the head of the ISAMEA Region (India, South Asia, Middle East and Africa) and Hidetoshi Kaneko, managing director of Panasonic South Africa.
Invitees included Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, Provincial Minister of Finance Ivan Meyer, Consul of Japan in Cape Town, Yasushi Naito, and the recently appointed brand ambassador for Panasonic, Captain of the Springboks Siya Kolisi.
Zille, De Lille and Wesgro CEO Tim Harris agreed that the opening of the Cape Town headquarters is a vote of confidence in the city, and will boost the local economy.
The new office, located in Century City, has a showroom called 'Life Experience Centre', which is open to the public and designed to enable Panasonic to hear customer voices with the aim of developing new products uniquely suited to the South African market.
On display are several Panasonic products which are available in other parts of the world but have not been introduced into the South African market as yet. These include the electric bike, robotic vacuum cleaner, facial steamer, dishwasher, hand-held massager, OLED television, Technics sound system, the Nano-e hair dryer, and others.
In March, Panasonic launched the 'You Can Be The Light' project in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation; at the opening ceremony, Panasonic donated the first batch of solar lanterns (414 units) to the Foundation, who in turn will distribute the units to those in need of lighting in off-grid areas.
As 2018 marks the 100th anniversaries of both Nelson Mandela’s birth and the founding of Panasonic by Konosuke Matsushita, the company aims to donate 10,000 (100×100) lights over the next few years.
