Canadian firm announces 500 jobs for Swords

Celestica, a Canadian technology company, will today announce around 500 new jobs in Swords, Co Dublin. As a result its Irish workforce will reach 750 over five years.

The announcement, to be made by the Tanaiste Ms Harney, will come after news yesterday of some 435 new jobs in Co Offaly and a further 100 in Mulhuddart, Co Dublin.

"We're very happy to be [in Ireland]," Celestica's president and chief executive, Mr Eugene Polistuk, told The Irish Times last night. "We're looking forward to it, and we expect to grow and invest. We have a lot of customers that wanted us to be there."

While he would not comment on the details of today's announcement, Mr Polistuk said Celestica had an ambitious expansion strategy which should send company revenues up to $10 billion (£6.72 billion) by the year 2001. Revenue estimates for the full year 1998 are running at around $3 billion.

The company is already the third-largest electronics manufacturing services firm in the world with 10,000 employees. Its functions include system assembly, printed circuit assembly and post-manufacturing support to major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), design, prototyping, product assembly and test, failure analysis, packaging and global distribution.

Mr Polistuk said the business was becoming more and more sophisticated. "When people outsource now, they're looking for people that have a full spectrum of capability on a global basis - companies that have the buying power, the financial power, the skills, the global reach, the information technology to hook it all together," he added.

In February, Celestica bought the Irish operation of Madge Networks, a network supplier to users of information technology. The company said it would keep on the factory at Swords and further expand the 220-strong workforce. Today's announcement will likely mean building another facility; industry sources said last night there was enough land around the current site for such an expansion.

The firm raised more than $400 million in its initial public offering in July, and said later in the month that second-quarter revenues had risen by 80 per cent on the 1997 quarter to $774 million. Celestica also recorded increased losses at $19 million, from $10 million.

Last night, Mr Polistuk said the losses were the result of one-time charges, and that operating profits had remained positive.

Meanwhile, the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, yesterday announced 435 new jobs for Co Offaly, the majority in Tullamore. The package includes 300 posts at the electronics firm LMS Beach.

And in Dublin, an Italian pharmaceutical firm, Rotta Research, is to create 100 jobs at Mulhuddart, formulating tablets to combat osteo-arthritis.

Ms Harney met officials of the firm on her trade mission to Italy last week.