PKC Group to transfer jobs to Russia

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The electrotechnical systems manufacturer PKC Group has announced plans to cut a total of 230 jobs at its factories in Kempele and Raahe. The company is moving much of its production to countries with lower labour costs - mainly Russia and Estonia.
      PKC is a listed company which manufactures electronic components for trucks and other vehicles.
      The Kempele factory employs 600 people. CEO Harri Suutari says that there is a need to cut 170 jobs at the plant.
      The company plans to expand operations in the Russian town Kostamuksha near the Finnish border. A few years ago PKC bought a factory in Kostamuksha, which had previously served as its subcontractor. The number of personnel at the factory has exceeded 1,000.
     
Although the focus of production for PKC is outside Finland, Suutari believes that the more than 400 people who will remain at the Kempele factory will have fairly secure jobs. The change is linked with a broader rearrangement of work at the company.
      "Previously we might manufacture the same product in several factories; the initial and final stages were in Finland, and the intermediate stages elsewhere. Now the manufacture of a single product is to be focused on one location. This leads to considerable savings", Suutari says.
      Suutari calculates that labour costs in Kostamuksha are about one tenth of what they are in Finland.
     
The Raahe factory is an electronics subcontractor, making goods mainly for industry. The factory employs 260 people, 60 of whom are to be made redundant.
      Much of that work will also be moved to Kostamuksha.
      Suutari says that the Raahe factory will focus on smaller series and more demanding production.
      He says that the transfer of subcontracting and production to cheaper countries has actually increased the use of Finnish labour, by allowing the further development of the company.
      In 1994, PKC employed 200 people, all of whom were Finns. Last year the company had 850 employees in Finland, and 2,700 in other parts of the world. After the upcoming job cuts, PKC will still have more than 600 employees in Finland.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Russian border town supplies components for Finnish electronics factory (25.1.2005)

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