By IANS
Chennai : Leading electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company Sanmina SCI Tuesday announced investments worth $50 million in India to establish its first state-of-art manufacturing facility.
It signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Tamil Nadu for a 100-acre plant to be developed in the newly sanctioned Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Oragadam on Chennai's outskirts.
Sanmina, having an annual turnover of $11 billion, will be the first occupant of the 350-acre Oragadam SEZ complex, said Shaktikanta Das, the state industry secretary.
Set up in 1980, Sanmina SCI manufactures a host of electronic products like circuit boards, precision machinery and memory modules for the defence, aerospace and medical industry.
It also provides post-manufacturing services to all these sectors and to the multimedia, automotive and communication industries.
Sanmina's president for global EMS operations, Hari Pillai said the company hopes to provide employment to 1,300 people in Tamil Nadu in a year's time and have its facility ready for operations by July 2008.
In the next five years, the company plans to scale up operations for 10,000 people directly and "the impact of the spin off of our presence will provide indirect employment to about 20,000 more people," said Pillai. He also promised employment for the physically challenged.
The company has 80 plants in 20 countries, and its Mexico manufacturing facility is at present its largest. "We hope the Oragadam facility will soon become Sanmina's largest production unit worldwide," Das said, welcoming the company to India.
"We hope to manufacture low volume high-end electronic equipment for the medical industry like advanced CT scanners, electronic communications tools for the defence industry and control systems for the auto and aerospace industry", Pillai said.
The worldwide EMS market will be worth $2.5 billion by 2010.