The Hindu Business Line : Nokia: Completion of Chennai facility expansion this year

Chennai, Feb. 23 Nokia India expects its plant expansion to be completed by the second half of this calendar year. The process of selecting a contractor is on and would be finalised shortly.

The company will put up a 20,000-sq. m facility at its existing plant in Sriperumbudur, about 45 km to the west of Chennai, adding to the 23,000-sq. m plant that has been producing mobile handsets since January 2006.

In December 2007, Nokia announced a $75-million (about Rs 300 crore) fresh investment in the Chennai plant for 2008. It has so far invested about $210 million in the Chennai facility.

Employment generation

When asked about the fresh jobs that the additional investment would generate, Mr Sachin Saxena, Operations Director – Nokia India Pvt Ltd, said he could not put a figure to it, as the new plant would have a high-level of automation. Transporting the large number of employees was a major issue as far as the company was concerned. It now has around 6,000 employees.

The Nokia Telecom Park, a notified special economic zone that houses not only Nokia’s plant but also that of some of its vendors, would employ nearly 30,000 people by the year-end against 15,000 now.

Component makers’ plea

Mr Saxena said most of the components were still imported and over the long-term if telecom manufacturers such as Nokia were to be competitive, there should be a significant level of local manufacture of components.

The electronic hardware manufacturers had taken this up with the Government and were asking it to come up with incentives that encouraged the growth of a domestic components industry and facilitated backward integration.

The Government today was not focussing on the telecom components sector and was instead concentrating only on the end products.

“We are asking the Government for some incentives for the component manufacturers,” he said.

As an example, he cited that all semi-conductors were being imported. Clear-cut policy guidelines were required.

For instance, semi-conductor plants required a large quantity of water. Some industries used hazardous chemicals. There were no clear policy guidelines to deal with issues such as these, Mr Saxena said.

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