Nokia to close Texas plant

Nokia is closing a Fort Worth, Texas, handset repair and distribution facility by the end of the first quarter, laying off 300 of the facility’s 450 workers. Nokia will send the repair work to a new factory it has built in Reynoso, Mexico, and contract out with an unnamed third-party distributor to handle the Fort Worth plant’s workload.

Nokia’s handset fortunes in the U.S. have declined as Motorola market share rockets upwards, but the closure isn’t necessarily indicative of Nokia scaling back operations. Nokia has been consolidating its North America manufacturing in the new Reynoso plant, where labor and facilities are cheaper. Work has been shifting from the Fort Worth facility for the last six years, where the plant employed 3800 workers in 2000, a Nokia spokesman told the Associated Press.

The spokesman added that the Fort Worth plant will be put up for sale and the remaining 150 staff will be relocated to Irvine, Texas, outside of neighboring Dallas, where Nokia has its U.S. headquarters.