Laird Technologies opens first offshore facility in India
Tuesday, 29 April 2008, 01:00 IST
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Chennai: The U.S. headquartered Laird Technologies Monday inaugurated its first offshore manufacturing facility in India. Laird Technologies, a unit of the Britain-based Laird Group Private Limited Company, is a leader in the design and manufacture of customised, performance-critical products for wireless and other advanced electronics applications. It employs over 14,000 people across 40 facilities in 14 countries. Set up with an investment of over $15 million, the Laird Technologies unit when fully operational will employ over 1,200 people at its Chennai facility. "Availability of a skilled work force, support from the Tamil Nadu government, the presence of good logistics, lower costs and our 'close to the customer' strategy were reasons for the choice of Chennai as our first offshore location in India," S. Talpallikar, managing director of India operations, Laird Technologies said. "This new facility will allow us to support our Indian customers with new products in a timely and efficient manner", the official said. "With the new manufacturing facility we are poised to aggressively expand our customer base in India over the next 12-18 months", he added. The manufacturing facility will initially produce antennas, battery packs and EMI shielding products for cellular handset applications for its Indian customers. The company also expects to export the products, manufactured at the Chennai facility, to overseas markets. Laird Technologies already supplies products to large Indian enterprises in the mobile phone, telecom infrastructure equipment, computer hardware, and automotive electronics sectors, from manufacturing facilities outside India. The 160,000 sq. ft manufacturing facility in Nokia SEZ (Special Economic Zone) in Sriperambudur near Chennai was inaugurated by G.K. Pillai, commerce secretary, government of India. Mike Connor, British deputy high commissioner for southern India, was present on the occasion.
Source: IANS
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