Japanese chip maker Hitachi will cut a further 130 jobs at its Singapore SDRAM plant subsidiary as the depressed state of the memory market continues to hurt the company.

Hitachi said last month that it would rid itself of 300 workers at the plant. The latest round of redundancies means that the company will have shed 44 per cent of the operation's workforce. Some 550 staff remain at the plant, which will now be operating at around 30 per cent of its total output capacity, a Hitachi spokesman said.

The chip maker would not say how much the extra redundancies will cost it in the short term, but having just posted a first-half loss of $236 million, the company clearly feels it has to make big medium-term savings. ®