Celestica buys H-P plant in Exeter

The Celestica Group has officially acquired the former Hewlett-Packard assembly plant in Exeter, more than seven years after agreement was reached on the transaction.

Foster’s Sunday Citizen reported that, according to Celestica’s Web site, the two companies had agreed in principle to the deal on June 16, 1997, but it wasn’t until Dec. 2, 2004, that it was completed.

The H-P plant at the junction of Routes 101 and 111 is 263,000 square feet and employed 400 people in 1997. The manufacturing and distribution operation was used for the integration and delivery of advanced workstation solutions to HP customers worldwide.

Celestica also recently acquired Hewlett-Packard’s printed circuit board assembly plant in Fort Collins, Colo.

“We are very pleased to have the Exeter system assembly operation join the Celestica Group,” said Eugene Polistuk, president and chief executive officer of the Toronto, Canada-based company.

Celestica is a worldwide company that has $2.6 billion in annual revenues and employs about 6,000 people. The company currently operates a facility in Salem and maintains its lease of a 206,000-square-foot building at Pease International Tradeport in Portsmouth after it downsized its workforce there and moved the assembly work to its Salem plant.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.