Three business reasons — quicker, closer and custom — have prompted computer maker Lenovo to open its first US manufacturing operation in North Carolina instead of low-cost foreign locations like Mexico or China, its North American president said on Wednesday.
Lenovo expects to finish hiring 115 production workers by the end of the month at the manufacturing operation that opened in January inside an existing distribution centre in Whitsett. The company on Wednesday celebrated the US production line — small compared to its sites elsewhere.
“The reason that we’re doing this and have made this decision is because we believe it can bring us some advantages in this marketplace,” Lenovo North America President Jay Parker said in an interview.
Lenovo, the world’s second-largest PC maker behind Hewlett-Packard, is based in China but has executive headquarters in Morrisville, where about 2,000 people work. The company bought IBM’s PC business there in 2005.
Lenovo’s site along Interstate 85, a major East Coast transportation corridor, is about 40 miles (65 kilometres) from the personal computer factory that Dell opened in 2005. The plant’s workforce peaked at 1,400 employees but it closed in 2010 after Dell recognised customers were turning away from desktop computers for more mobile devices.
The addition of production to an existing Lenovo distribution and returns centre has been called an example of onshoring or reshoring — a move by manufacturers to reverse the decades-long trend of transferring production to low-cost countries overseas. Parker made it clear that Lenovo’s North Carolina operation fills some important niches.
