Nokia shuts India plant, cutting 8,000 jobs

Finnish telecom giant Nokia has shut down its mobile manufacturing facility in Chennai, India, leaving thousands of people jobless. More than 30,000 people are expected to be affected by the shutdown of the Sriperumbudur facility, which was one of the biggest in the world. The plant employs 8,000 people directly and 25,000 others indirectly, according to media reports.

Microsoft has informed Nokia that it will be terminating the manufacturing services defined in the agreement with effect from 1 November 2014. In absence of further orders from Microsoft, Nokia will suspend handset production at the Sriperumbudur facility from 1st November.

Nokia statement

The plant’s cumulative production was 800 million handsets, and the company exported phones worth more than US$2bn a year from it. The factory, touted as Nokia’s largest production facility outside Europe, was excluded from the earlier $7.5bn Microsoft-Nokia deal due to a pending tax dispute involving the mobile phone major.

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