"We are aware of the interest of the Romanian media in our operations in Cluj. As we have said before, Nokia informs the public every time new and relevant developments occur. Manufacturing in Cluj has not yet begun. We are only in the early testing stages of some assembly lines," stated Anna Simai, Senior Communication Manager of Nokia Southeastern Europe. On Wednesday at 3 p.m., the workers of German company Goldbeck, which is constructing the factory, were still working outside.
Excavators, cement mixers and bulldozers are still at the site. Work continues at an urgent pace, as if things are constantly running late. Close by the construction site, which is guarded by the employees of a Cluj-based security firm, lies the brain of the new building, the white barracks where the Goldbeck engineers and the Nokia staff are located.
The construction site manager, Goldbeck Jr. reassures Nokia's project manager Allan Knight: "We light the fire so that things may go faster." The factory is divided into three huge facilities, yet none are finished. You can still see the metallic structure of the ceiling in each of them. However, instead of engineers assembling mobile phones, we see construction workers.
One enters the factory through another facility, a kind of huge antechamber where construction supplies are stored: steel rolls, some pipes and metallic beams. From this facility one enters into another, three times larger.
Several access doors for personnel are "cut" into the left hand side. One of them leads to stairs that go up to an office area. The finishing touches still need to be applied. There are only doors and windows.
"Has phone production started?" we ask one worker. "Where (are the mobile phones), 'cause I don't know? We'd like them to give us some of those, too," he jokes.
Very close to the entrance of this facility are three huge red metallic doors on the right. All three read, "Do no enter" in large letters. We are not allowed to go any further than that. The three massive facilities will see no less than 3,500 employees work there. Everything resembles an actual city inside a city. The factory will be serviced by restaurants, hotels, and leisure areas. In fact, a new town will emerge near Cluj, the Nokia Village.
The opening of the Nokia factory in Cluj county, where most of the operations of the plant in Bochum, Germany will be relocated has caused debates within the European Parliament during its session in Strasbourg. The chairman of the Party of European Socialists within the European Parliament, Martin Schultz, has demanded that the EU not allow the factory in Cluj to open. European Commission chairman Jose Manuel Barroso stated that Nokia did not get European subsidies for relocating its production of handsets from the factory in Bochum to Romania. The German Government intends to investigate whether Finnish group Nokia used EU subsidies to relocate production from Germany to Eastern Europe.
The head of Romania's delegation to the European People's Party, Sorin Frunzaverde, stated that the transfer of Nokia's production from Germany to other factories, including the one in Jucu, meant that European resources were not wasted but that they were transferred to another member country.
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