Sanmina to set up EMS plant in Oragadam

CHENNAI: Leading electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company Sanmina SCI recently announced investments worth US $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 US $11 billion, will be the first occupant of the 350-acre Oragadam SEZ complex, said Shaktikanta Das, the state industry secretary. Oragadam near Chennai is the location for Sanmina-SCI’s first state-of-the-art manufacturing technology campus in India.

The campus, when completed, will provide leading OEMs in the medical, defense and aerospace, communications, automotive, and multimedia and consumer markets with cutting-edge manufacturing services that are especially tailored to the exacting technical and quality requirements of these market segments.

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 hoped 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. "The impact of the spinoff of our presence will provide indirect employment to about 20,000 more people," he added. Pillai also promised employment for the physically challenged.

Sanmina 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.

Pillai said, '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." The global EMS market will likely be worth $2.5 billion by 2010.