The Hindu Business Line : SKF opens application development centre

Mr Tom Johnstone, SKF Group President and CEO, and Mr K.C. Mehra, Chairman, SKF India Ltd, addressing newspersons in Bangalore on Thursday. - G.R.N. Somashekar

Bangalore , Nov. 18

THE SKF Group opened its application development centre here on Thursday. While declining to reveal investments, company officials said the new centre would become a full-fledged R&D centre for the company over the coming year.

Initially, the application development centre (ADC) will focus on developing competencies in application engineering, product and system design, advanced calculation and simulation, manufacturing of prototypes, testing and validation.

"We have invested Rs 700 crore in our Indian facilities till date and the investments put in the new centre reinforce our commitment to the Indian market. India, along with China and Latin America, is our priority market and this is one of the key reasons for us to open the centre here. We expect the Indian operations to increase exports going ahead," Mr Tom Johnstone, President & CEO, SKF Group, said.

Interestingly, out of the 24 million two-wheelers produced globally every year, 20 million come from Asia and this almost amounts to 83 per cent of the total production. Given these facts, the ADC in India will enable the company to target these opportunities. Already, the ADC has eight people on board working on several products such as special new bearings developed for steering in two-wheelers.

In order to ramp up business further, the group will focus on bearing and bearing units, seals, mechatronics, services, consultancy and lubrication systems. For this, the SKF group is actively looking at acquisitions and is "currently evaluating candidates which can strengthen our offerings in these platforms and the (target) companies are located worldwide including India," Mr Johnstone said.

On its consultancy practice, SKF has bagged two contracts from the Maharashtra State Electricity Board for providing maintenance consultancy.

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