Salcomp launches commercial operations from erstwhile Nokia factory

The erstwhile Nokia factory in Sriperumbudur was India's pride as it manufactured about one crore handsets a year

After being defunct for six years, the erstwhile Nokia factory in Sriperumbudur, 50 km from here, came to life on Friday with Finnish electronics manufacturer Salcomp launching commercial operations from the plant.

Salcomp reviving the Nokia plant, a symbol of India's economic success story, is a major boost to the 'Make in India' programme of the Narendra Modi government and components manufactured here will be exported to other countries.

The sprawling Nokia plant was left out of the Microsoft-Nokia deal when the former acquired the latter due to a tax dispute between the Finnish mobile maker and the Indian Government. The plant closed down in November 2014 and efforts to sell the factory began after the Rs 21,000-crore tax dispute was resolved in 2018.

Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami inaugurated the plant located in the Nokia Telecom SEZ on Friday via video conferencing from Fort. St. George, the seat of power of the Tamil Nadu government.

“The Nokia factory is revived. Commercial production commenced out of the factory on Friday,” Sasikumar Gendham, Managing Director, Salcomp India, told DH. Salcomp had bought the plant last year for Rs 215 crore.

The new facility will manufacture chargers and other electronic devices, and components that go into chargers, phones, and accessories. Salcomp, which has been operating out of the Nokia Telecom SEZ since 2007, has invested Rs 1,800 crore in expanding its production capacity, including at the new facility it had bought, since 2019.

The revival of the plan is expected to create 10,000 jobs and Salcomp did increase its workforce after it resumed operations following the Covid-19 lockdown. Salcomp launching operations at the Nokia factory is also a boost to Tamil Nadu which is making a concerted effort to emerge as the electronics manufacturing hub of the country, trying to attract companies that may move out of China due to Covid-19 scare.

With launching operations at the Nokia plant, Salcomp now occupies over 50 per cent of the Nokia Telecom SEZ which is spread over ten lakh square feet. Besides one plant in Noida, Salcomp has four plants in Sriperumbudur, including the Nokia factory that has been acquired. It is in the process of acquiring the fifth plant.

Nokia was the first mobile phone manufacturer to step onto the Indian soil to set up its unit way back in 2006. The plant was once India’s pride as it was one of the largest manufacturing units in the world producing one crore mobile phones a year and had employed 30,000 people directly or indirectly.