Nokia's Sriperumbudur plant, once the largest mobile manufacturing facility in India, which faced a lot of issues and ultimately had to shut down, got a lifeline on Monday as Salcomp has acquired the facility to produce components (mostly chargers) for Apple in India.

 

The Sriperumbudur factory in Tamil Nadu was lying vacant and also all its machines at the plant, since its shutdown around seven years ago.  Salcomp is the world's largest manufacturer of mobile chargers including that of Apple, which will now manufacture not only for Apple in India, but also for exports, mostly to China.

Read more: Sriperumbudur: a reminder of what can go wrong

 

Speaking of the development, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology and Telecommunications said that Salcomp will be investing Rs.2,000 crore over the next five years.

“Salcomp, which is the largest manufacturer and supplier of chargers for Apple phones, has reached an agreement to take over the entire facility of Nokia handset lying closed for the last so many years, is now going to start from March 2020,” Prasad told reporters here.

 

The facility will be renovated with diversified lines of manufacturing lines including stamping, moulding and paint-shops, he informed. “This facility will attract 10,000 direct jobs and 50,000 indirect jobs in the coming days and 70 per cent of the products will be exported, mostly to China. It will also lead to value addition and progress in the right direction of ‘Make in India’ programme," Prasad said.

 

Meanwhile, Prasad showcased the latest handset made by Apple (iPhone XR) in India – the iPhone XR – which has started production in India for domestic market as well as exports, underlining the government’s efforts to bolster mobile manufacturing in the country. These iphones are designed in California (the US) and assembled and marketed in India.

 

Apple has multiple contract manufacturing facilities in India (Bengaluru and Chennai) – manufactured by Foxccon and Wistron – and is investing around $1 billion in India in expanding its business out of the country as it is gradually shifting its plans from China.

 

Many of its components suppliers are also now shifting their bases in India such as Flex, Sunwoda Electronic and Shenzhen Yuto Packaging Technology, to support the manufacturing from India, Salcomp being the latest one. Such move by other manufacturers would also boost the electronic manufacturing in India, thereby increasing the export revenue and reducing the imports.

 

For instance, Prasad informed that through the manufacturing policy in India, there has been rise in the exports of electronic goods from India. There was an export worth $200 million in 2017-18, which grew to $1.6 billion in 2018-19 and in the current financial year, it is expected to reach up to $3.2 billion, out of which $1.6 billion is expected to come only from exports of mobile phones.

 

 

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