Nokia Chennai SEZ attracts more investment

29 April, 2008:

The electronics hardware special economic zone at Sriperumbudur near Chennai set up by Nokia is attracting more global firms. The latest company that has evinced keen interest in the Zone is global wireless products and electronics applications vendor, Laird Technologies.

Laird recently inaugurated its first offshore manufacturing facility in India at the Nokia SEZ.

The facility has a capacity to employ over 1,200 people once operations start. This centre would support the wireless baseband equipment requirements of Nokia's cellphone manufacturing facility in Chennai as well as other Indian customers. Laird is one of eight vendors catering to Nokia's equipment supply requirements for the latter's lone manufacturing facility in India. Laird Technologies presently supplies products to large Indian enterprises in the mobile phone, telecom infrastructure equipment, computer hardware and automotive electronics spaces from its manufacturing facilities outside India.

The 1.6 lakh-sq ft manufacturing facility has been set up at an investment of more than Rs 60 crore. The unit is aimed at producing antennas, battery packs and EMI shielding products for cellular handset applications. It has also plans to export the products to overseas markets.

With this new centre, Laird is poised to aggressively expand its customer base in India over the next 12-18 months. St Louis-headquartered Laird Technologies is a unit of UK-based Laird Group Plc and employs over 14,000 employees across 40 facilities in 14 countries. The company designs and supplies customised products for wireless and other advanced electronics applications, and is establishing a growing position in the design and supply of complete radio frequency (RF) modules and systems.

Besides telecommunications, data transfer and information technology, the company supplies to the automotive, aerospace, defense, consumer, medical, and industrial sectors.

LG has set up the Special Economic Zone in Chennai with an investment of Rs 50,000 crore. Nokia project entails creation of a hub within the SEZ, a kind of Free Trade Warehouse, where about 200 vendors of Nokia will park their products and Nokia will import from them as and when required.