Huawei, the Chinese multi-national technology company, has announced that it will build a highly automated wireless
communications product factory in France, specialising in 4G and 5G equipment.

A planned investment of over 200 million euros was announced for this new facility, and the company says that construction will use ‘some of the world’s most advanced production equipment and tools from local leading partners’.

Huawei says that the wireless communications equipment produced by this plant will be mainly used in Europe, and that it will be able to cover every ‘link’ along its value chain ‘and drive local industries forward, both upstream and downstream’ (www.huawei.com).

These ‘links’ include R&D, sales, procurement, production, logistics, service and ‘talent development’; the plant will also see one of the first implementations in Europe of Huawei’s advanced-manufacturing technologies.

Huawei estimates that this project will generate products worth 1 billion euros worth of products annually and directly create 500 jobs.

The company has operated in Europe for 20 years, employing over 12,000 people and generating about 170,000 jobs in Europe indirectly.