The Hindu Business Line : Hampson Precision of UK to shift assembly lines to India

The UK-based tier 2 automobile parts maker Hampson Precision Automotive will shift certain assembly lines to India as part of its cost-saving exercise.

The Hampson Precision Automotive President, Mr Roger Mackrill, told Business Line that the company is already in the process of shifting 100 machines from its UK plant. Most of these machines are used for making main parts of the turbo chargers. Though the assembly line for turbo chargers in the UK will be wound up, they will be replaced with machines for manufacturing products such as variable geometric turbo chargers, which are popular in Europe.

"We will shift the manufacture of these products to India once the Asian market adapts to them," he said.

Mr Mackrill said one of the reasons for setting up a plant in India was to take advantage of high availability of engineering skills in India as well the huge cost savings from operating out of the country.

Though he did not reveal the amount of cost benefit arising out of its operations in India, he said it would make the company extremely competitive both in terms of quality as well as in terms of pricing.

Mr Mackrill said because of this exercise, the precision automotive division, whose turnover is around $40 million, is expected to increase to around $60 million between three years and five years.

The Hampson Industries Chief Executive, Mr Kim Ward, said the company is in talks with a few aerospace firms in India for manufacturing products for them. He said the company expects to take advantage of the business potential emerging out of the offset obligation from Boeing as well as Airbus, which have bagged multi-billion orders from Indian domestic airlines for supply of aircraft.

Hampson expects to invest up to $20 million over a period of five years for expanding the capacity of its plant near Bangalore.

It expects to have a turnover of around $100 million in 10 years from its Indian operations. Currently, 90 per cent of the products manufactured at its plant here will be exported and within five years, the company will gradually increase its business in the domestic market to 50 per cent. Its customers for turbo chargers include Honeywell, BWA and Cummins. It also supplies fuel injection components to Bosch as well as Delphi.

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