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Our Bureau

Scouting for land in New Delhi for another centre

Pune , Jan. 10

Bharat Fritz Werner, the Rs 205-crore machine tool manufacturing company, has inaugurated its first tech centre in Pune. The company plans to set up tech centres in New Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore within two years.

Mr S.N. Mishra, President and Chief Executive Officer of BFW and Mr N.N. Upadhyay, senior Vice-President, told newspersons that an investment of Rs 3 crore was utilised for setting up the centre. Work on the Pune centre had begun seven months ago and it currently had five machines at the site. Two more machines were expected to come in, Mr Upadhyay said. The centre would have about 20 personnel working at the facility.

The tech centre spread over 8,000 sq ft would be a showroom for machines, could also be the demonstration centre where machine capabilities would be showcased to customers and also operate with full-fledged sales and service support. It would also house a computer-aided design centre and computer-aided manufacturing facility, he said.

Land acquisition

Mr Upadhyay said BFW was scouting for land in New Delhi for the setting up of the second tech centre and was expected to begin land acquisition process in April. Locations that have been shortlisted include Gurgaon and Mannesar. The investment would also be on similar lines and noted that work on Chennai and Bangalore would begin later. He said the Bangalore tech centre would be housed in its present facility.

Asked about the setting up of the subsidiary in Germany, Mr Upadhyay said about 50 per cent of the work was completed and would be located in Munich. The company was currently scouting for a location and noted that it would be a phase-wise development.

The first phase would be to form a company according to the Dutch laws and incorporate it as a 100 per subsidiary of BFW, India. It would then open up showroom and recruit locals.

More services

The second phase would be to set up critical value-added services, which would include sub-assemblies, hydraulic electric, electronic assemblies. These are being done to bring down the cost and noted that it would bring it down by close to 20 per cent. He noted that the basic assembly would still be carried out in Bangalore and the final assembly at Munich.

The third phase would be to make it the nerve centre for tackling the markets of Austria, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland. He noted that it has a presence in France already. He said the first phase was expected to be completed by December 2007, which would include finalisation of the location, moving out machines from the Bangalore facility and local recruitment. The total investment in this would be Rs 15 crore, he said.

Mr Upadhyay said with these in place, it was targeting to increase its exports. Currently about 10 per cent was contributed to the total revenue by way of exports and noted that BFW was also chasing the industry target of 35 per cent revenues from exports. The company had closed the last fiscal, March 2006 with a turnover of Rs 205 crore and was targeting Rs 295 crore for the current fiscal.

Commenting on the Dobaspet facility, he said acquisition of land was in process and has already received in principle the agreement for the land purchase. He said this was being acquired keeping in view the land required for further expansion. This is expected to cater to the critical machining needs of the aerospace and engineering industry.

He said BFW has already begun its supply to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd of machined components required for the aviation industry. Mr Upadhyay said about Rs 70 crore was invested by the company in the past two years and added that it was looking at another investment of Rs 30 crore for the next two years.

More Stories on : New Projects | Engineering | Maharashtra

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