Lenovo to set up production facility in Himachal

Mumbai: Lenovo will set up its second manufacturing facility in the country in Himachal Pradesh. The new plant, with a capacity of two million units of desktops and notebooks a year, is estimated to cost of $11 million.

Lenovo expects the plant, to be built in four acres of land, to be operational in third quarter of the current year.

The new facility would enable Lenovo to optimise its supply chain and have better control of the Indian market, the company said.

"Indian market holds strategic importance to us and the new plant at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh would help us cater to entire domestic market and improve cost as well as customer experience," Jeff Gallinat, vice president, Lenovo global manufacturing, said.

The plant would undertake manufacturing, product configuration, value addition, distribution, logistics and customer support and would create 350 jobs, he said

The company has a plant in Pondicherry which has a capacity of one million units per year.

Lenovo opened an innovation centre in Mumbai last year and also announced a worldwide marketing hub in Bangalore in July this year.

Personal computer sales in India grew by 26 per cent to over 6.3 million units in 2006-07 and will touch 8 million units in 2008, as per estimates of the Manufacturer''s Association for Information Technology (MAIT).