Toshiba announced on February 3 that the company will shut down a NAND flash memory chip assembly plant located in Kyushu in western Japan, with an aim to improve production efficiency by consolidating the company's front- and back-end manufacturing processes for NAND memory chips, Dow Jones reported on February 3. The Kyushu plant is slated for shutdown in November 2010. The entire staff of 400 at Toshiba's Kyushu plant will be transferred to its Yokkaichi plant by then. Meanwhile, Toshiba said that the company plans to increase the share of overseas NAND flash memory assembly operations from the current 70% to about 80% by the end of fiscal year 2010, which runs from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011, according to the same source.