Nolato Texas Inc. has begun injection molding high-precision mobile-communication parts at a recently leased Texas plant.
``We are big in Sweden, supplying Ericsson and Nokia, and these companies say you need to be local,'' President Torsten Nilson said in a telephone interview. ``We decided to supply on a global basis and established the plant in Fort Worth.''
Nolato Texas was incorporated in July, and Nilson became president Oct. 1.
The firm leased a 40,000-square-foot plant at Alliance Airport from a development management firm linked to Ross Perot Jr. Production started the week of Jan. 10.
Nolato Texas uses proprietary technology in making plastic parts that customers assemble into their cellular telephones. A unit of Finland's Nokia Corp. has a major production facility at Alliance Airport. A unit of Sweden's Telefonaktiebolaget L.M., Ericsson has regional headquarters in nearby Richardson, Texas, and other operations in Lynchburg, Va. Also, Motorola Inc. has a Fort Worth presence.
The Fort Worth plant employs 10, but Nilson expects to have 40 workers by year's end.
Parent firm Nolato AB of Torekov, Sweden, reported profit of 118 million Swedish kronor ($14.8 million) on sales of SKr1.37 billion ($172.2 million) for the nine months ended Sept. 30.
Nolato's mobile communications business area in Sweden employs more than 800 and projected 1998 sales of SKr795 million ($99.9 million) for plastic telecommunication components and injection molded and extruded silicon parts.