Nokia plant in Fargo to lay off about 50 workers

FARGO - About 50 of the 300 employees at the Nokia plant here will be laid off, a spokesman for the communications giant confirmed Thursday.

The plant is the base for the advanced production unit of Nokia's Location and Commerce Division, branded as "Here."

The division creates maps and detailed three-dimensional renderings that are used by consumers online, on smartphones and in automobile navigation devices.

"This is a streamlining of our operations related to the specific site," Nokia's senior communications manager Oskar S'dergren said.

"The expertise and the skills that the team is providing is still a critical part of our map-building process," he said, but "current and future business needs" require that "we need to scale down."

" 'Here' is a critical part, and will continue to be a part, of the Nokia strategy." S'dergren said.

The plant is at 1715 Gold Drive S., south of Interstate 94 near 25th Street South.

Laid-off workers will get two months' pay, though efforts will be made to place them in other jobs in Nokia, S'dergren said.

Nokia also put together a severance package including one week of pay for every six months worked, career counseling, and a grant program for employees who want to start businesses, he said.

The Nokia plant in Fargo got its start as part of California-based Navteq, which opened an office here in the mid-1990s.

Nokia, based in Finland, purchased Navteq for more than $8 billion in 2007.

Last June, Nokia announced that it planned to cut 10,000 jobs by the end of 2013 to "rescale" its operations, CNET News reported.

S'dergren said the Fargo layoffs aren't tied to that decision.

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