The investment could safeguard 700 jobs

The cash will be used to boost the factory's manufacturing capability and set up a customer monitoring service.

It is not known if any new jobs will be created but the announcement is expected to secure aabout 700 posts at the plant.

More than 900 people were employed at the plant three years ago before a world-wide downturn in demand resulted in significant job losses across Scotland's manufacturing sector.

Sun Microsystem's plant at Linlithgow was set up nearly 13 years ago and is their only production base outside of the United States.

So many companies have struggled and have had huge cuts and we are still managing to invest Sun Microsystems spokeswoman

In May 2000, the firm ploughed �26m into the plant, creating 200 engineering and production jobs.

But the company ran into difficulties when the global market for electronics contracted two-years ago.

Last October the multi-national announced that it was reducing its world-wide workforce by 11%.

Then in January 2003 it announced a record quarterly loss of �1.4bn.

Tuesday's announcement is being hailed by Sun Microsystems as "a turnaround" in its fortunes.

'Huge turnaround'

Explaining the investment in Linlithgow, a company spokeswoman said: "The manufacturing capability is to increase substantially and a customer monitoring service will be set up.

"It is a huge turnaround story for manufacturing. So many companies have struggled and have had huge cuts and we are still managing to invest."

A percentage of the �36m investment is coming from Scottish Development International.