SKF India plans major investments

SKF India has chalked out a major investment plan for India as it intends to enhance its market share through introduction of a series of innovative products and services across the industries. For the current year, the company has decided to invest around Rs 100-150 crore in expanding and upgrading its existing capacity as also acquiring value-based capacities.

Speaking to Express Textile, Mr Rakesh Makhija, managing director, SKF India stated, "India has emerged as a huge market for us and now we have firmed up our plan to explore these opportunities by introducing a whole range of product innovations. In fact, now we want ourself to be known as knowledge engineering company which can offer a complete package of solutions to the industry and help them maintain their edge in the global competition. We want to equip our customers with SKF knowledge in order to make them more efficient, more successful and more profitable."

Addressing the SKF Technical Press Day recently in Mumbai, Mr Tom Johnstone, CEO, AB SKF said, "The whole world is looking at India and so are we with great expectation. India has always been a preferred market and will continue to be so. In fact, we want to develop our Indian operation as a global sourcing hub in future. India as well as globally, our investments will be in expanding the existing facilities as also acquiring new capacities." While describing the future market strategy, Mr Makhija says, "We intend to leverage our five-platform strategy to fuel growth and truly deliver integrated solutions, which help our customers to enhance their competitive edge. If our revenues in India today comprise mainly of bearing sales, in the next three years our target would be to have a significant part of our sales coming from seals, services, lubricant systems and mechatronics. This is a unique opportunity for us to enhance the value and scope of our offerings to customers and that cannot be easily matched by any of our competitors."

On whether SKF has got anything specific for the textile industry which is currently on the upsurge, the chief of India operation said that SKF India was closely looking at the recent developments in textiles and would continue to participate in its growth story.

With the recent acquisition of Vibration Engineers and Consultants' business, the Rs 850-crore SKF India which has at present got two manufacturing units in Pune and Bangalore, has marked the beginning of an ambitious growth plan. Last year, the company launched its SKF Application Development Centre which focuses on the development of completely new technologies as well as on optimisation of the existing product range.