Elcoteq builds new plant in Beijing.

Elcoteq (Espoo, Finland) was announced that it will build a new manufacturing plant in China's capital city, Beijing. The plant will be located at the Xingwang industrial park, which, headed by Nokia (Espoo, Finland), is emerging as a large cluster for the manufacture of communications electronics and a center of high technology. The new Elcoteq plant will nave approximately 118,000 sq. ft. of production space and will employ an estimated 1,200 people. Production ramp-up is expected to take place during the first quarter of 2003. The plant will manufacture electronic subassemblies for mobile phones for both Nokia and other customers of Elcoteq.

"It is vital for Elcoteq to be a part of this industrial mark project, which is regarded as the most important international industrial park for communications electronics in China," stated Hannu Bergholm, president of Elcoteq. "The Chinese market continues to grow, and the country is the largest mobile phone market in the world. So, there is demand for electronics manufacturing services and for Elcoteq's particular expertise in wireless communications products."

Elcoteq already has manufacturing plants in Beijing and Dongguan with combined production space of 225,000 sq. ft. The company also has a Customer Center in Hong Kong, which provides customer, material management and maintenance services. The company currently has 2,000 employees in China, 800 of whom work at the company's Beijing plants.

Based in Singapore, John can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail].