Hewlett-Packard Co yesterday contributed to the gaiety of the Irish nation – hopeful but nervous as the Framework Document contribution to the attempts to achieve a permanent peace – by announcing its first major investment in the Republic. It is to invest $160m to create 1,100 jobs over the next four years, the investment being all the more welcome to the Industrial Development Authority because it is relatively low-tech and therefore more labour-intensive. The 300,000 square foot manufacturing plant, to be sited near Dublin, will produce print cartridges in support of the company’s growing inkjet-printer business in Europe, and is due to be completed in late 1996, when it should employ 300. It will bring the company’s total of European manufacturing sites to 11 – printers are made in Spain, personal computers in France, and it also has plants here in the UK, in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The site has not actually been chosen yet, but it is looking for a 100-acre site to buy, and is currently considering several suitable locations in the northwest and west of Dublin – but hopes to break ground at the new site in late summer, and will lease facilities so it can start work next spring. Hewlett-Packard Ireland Ltd has its headquarters in Dublin and support offices in Cork and Limerick, but it employs just 65 people and generated orders in Ireland of only about $50m in its last fiscal year.
