Indian manufacturing facility announced

Motorola is planning an initial US$30 million manufacturing plant in India.

This will be scaled up to a total of US$100 million in phases.

The company will establish a manufacturing plant in the 120 hectare Sriperumbudur Hi-tech Special Economic Zone (SEZ) being developed jointly by Motorola and the Tamilnadu government at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai.

Expected to be operational in 2007, the facility will undertake full-scale production, to support a wide range of Motorola handsets. It will also support the production and assembly of network base stations for products across Motorola's Network and Enterprise portfolio.

Motorola's manufacturing initiative will supplement the presence of its six R&D centres in India, including Motorola Labs, Core Networks Division, Embedded Communications Computing, and Global Software Group. These are run by about 3000 engineers.