One Billion Mobile Phone Chargers

Finland based Salcomp, a company which specialises in manufacturing mobile phone chargers says that it has just made it's billionth charger - at its plant in China on 25 October 2007. Founded in 1975, Salcomp has production plants in China, Brazil andIndia and employs some 7,800 people.

"We made our first mobile phone charger in 1988. Throughout the 1990s the production volumes were small compared with the current level; rapid growth on the charger market began in the 21st century. From 1990 to 1999 we made a total of some 100 million chargers, whereas from 2000 till today the corresponding figure is close to 900 million," says Pekka Kyyriainen who has been with Salcomp since 1995 and is currently in charge of production in China.

Salcomp says that it has focused on chargers based on the environmentally friendly switch mode technology. Introduced first by Salcomp in 1988, switch mode technology has now nearly completely replaced the older linear technology in mobile phone charging. Switch mode chargers have a significantly better utilisation ratio and clearly lower standby-mode energy consumption than linear chargers. The energy saved with the one billion Salcomp chargers as compared with linear ones equals approximately the annual output of a 600-MW coal power plant.

Salcomp's factories have a current total capacity of some 330 million chargers per year.

Posted to the site on 29th October 2007