Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2000/04/20/motorola_to_take_over_scottish/

Motorola to take over Scottish Hyundai fab

£1.3 billion purchase to created 1350 jobs

By Tony Smith

Posted in On-Prem, 20th April 2000 12:04 GMT

Motorola is buying and re-equipping Hyundai's fab in Dunfermline, Scotland in a production expansion project that will cost the company around £1.3 billion over the next five years. The Dunfermline plant will eventually employ 1350 people, Motorola said, adding to the 6500 staff it already employs at its three Scottish plants in East Kilbride, South Queensferry and Easter Inch. And the reason for Motorola's largesse? The massively expanding cellphone market. The 100,000 square metre plant will churn out chips for the mobile comms business. "The new facility will allow Motorola to help meet strong current, and anticipated future, market demand," the company said. Motorola still needs to dot the Ts and cross the Is on its contract with Hyundai, but we assume it's takeover of the Dunfermline fab is pretty much a done deal - otherwise its self-congratulatory 'look how much money we're chucking a Scotland' press release might prove something of an embarrassment, though we hope, for the sake of those 1350 folk, it doesn't. ®