The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment has described the decision by electronics manufacturer Sanmina-SCI to invest €30 million in an expansion which will create 50 high- skilled engineering jobs as a major boost to securing the firm's Irish operation. Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent, reports.

Micheál Martin paid particular tribute to the local management of Sanmina-SCI in Fermoy, Co Cork, for having the vision to transform the facility from an electronics-manufacturing services provider to the computer industry to one which now supplies the medical industry.

Since its establishment in Fermoy in 1989, SCI has undergone several transformations.

It moved from contract manufacturing of PCs in the early 1990s to manufacturing set-tops in the late 1990s and, since its merger with Sanmina in 2002, to manufacturing medical devices.

The company currently employs 400 permanent staff and 200 part-time staff in Fermoy.

The €30 million investment, in addition to enabling a physical expansion of the facility, will also allow for the upgrading of the skills of the existing employees, Mr Martin said.

"This is excellent news for Fermoy and the surrounding area . . . The investment in higher skills and higher-value products is in line with the Government's and IDA Ireland's strategy for the international manufacturing sector in Ireland.

"The danger in this business is that if you stay where you are, you are not going to survive, so you have to transform yourself into the higher-value products, in particular the medical technology sector, and that's what the team here in Fermoy have done."

Sanmina-SCI's president of global EMS Operations, Hari Pillai, said that the Fermoy facility's track record, its workforce flexibility and Ireland's medical technological industry, as well as IDA Ireland support, were all major influences in the company's decision to invest in Fermoy. "Fermoy is a strategic site for the company within its European operations, and this transformation of its capabilities, with the addition of design collaboration, is a very important development for the Irish operation," Mr Pillai said.

Paul O'Driscoll, Sanmina-SC vice-president, who heads the Fermoy operation, revealed that medical device contract work had increased over the past two years from 60 per cent to 90 per cent of the facility's business following a strategic decision to focus on the medical devices sector.

Among the leading medical device companies which the Fermoy facility now supplies are Roche Diagnostics in both Germany and the US, Tyco Healthcare in Galway and the Waters Corporation, which has plants in Wexford and Manchester, Mr O'Driscoll said..