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Nokia to close Alliance distribution facility
By JIM FUQUAY
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
FORT WORTH — Nokia said Thursday it will close its cell phone distribution facility at the Alliance Airport industrial park next spring, idling 300 workers and bringing to an end the Finnish company’s decade-long presence as a major Tarrant County employer.

The company, one of the world’s biggest wireless communications companies, now employs 450 people at Alliance, said spokesman Charles Chopp. About 150 of those will be transferred to the company’s U.S. headquarters facility in Irving. The other 300 will be laid off starting Dec. 10 and continuing in phases through early next year, Chopp said.

He said workers who lose their jobs will be offered severance packages and outplacement services.

Nokia came to Fort Worth in 1992 with a cellular phone factory it opened in a joint venture with Tandy Corp., now RadioShack. Two years later the company announced plans for a factory employing at least 1,800 people in the Alliance Airport development in far-north Fort Worth.

The company received a 10-year property tax exemption which expired in 2005.

In 1997 Nokia announced that it would move its North American headquarters to Irving, where it now employs about 2,000, Chopp said. The company’s Tarrant County employment continued to swell until it peaked at about 3,800 at two facilities in mid-2000.

But starting in early 2001 the company began moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico and South Korea, when it laid off 1,500 local workers over five months. By 2002 the Alliance facility was doing only final assembly, packaging and distribution. The company continued to shift production jobs to a new factory in Reynosa, Mexico, until Nokia only handled distribution and repair at Alliance.

Chopp said the company plans to sell its 470,000-square-foot factory at 5650 Alliance Gateway after it is vacated next year.