The Hindu Business Line : SKF setting up two manufacturing plants

Expansion mode: Mr Tom Johnstone, CEO & President, AB SKF, with Mr Rakesh Makhija, Managing Director, SKF India Ltd, at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday.

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Mumbai, Nov. 15 SKF, global suppliers of bearings, seals and other related products, is investing Rs 420 crore in India to set up two new manufacturing units. This is the MNC’s highest investment in any single country at the moment.

Mr Tom Johnstone, President and CEO of AB SKF, said the company was investing Rs 150 crore in its upcoming plant in Uttarakhand and another Rs 270 crore in a new plant in Ahmedabad. While the Uttarakhand unit will cater to the automotive and two-wheeler industries, the Ahmedabad facility, which is expected to start production by the first quarter of 2009, will manufacture large size industrial bearings.

“We are extremely confident on our growth prospects in India and we are expecting to double sales in the next four years,” he told presspersons here on Thursday.

The SKF group, which has 120 production units spread across 24 countries, first started trading operations in Kolkata in 1923 and has two bearing manufacturing plants in Bangalore and Pune.

Eye on acquisitions

Mr Johnstone said the company was also looking at acquisitions in India. Globally, it is in the process of acquiring a European magnetic bearings company, which will be its 13th acquisition in the last two and half years.

Mr Rakesh Makhija, Managing Director of SKF India, said the company was betting big on the wind energy sector for its products in India, which was in the process of increasing its capacity from the present 7,113 MW to 45,000 MW.

Mr Johnstone said SKF had developed a new family of bearings that reduce energy consumption by at least 30 per cent compared to standard ISO products. The new bearing family comprises the two bearing types that are the most used bearings in the world — deep groove ball bearings and tapered roller bearings. Manufacturing of these bearings are expected to commence from later this year.

Energy potential

“As an example of the potential of these bearings, consider that the energy consumption in industrial motor driven systems in US and European Union is 1.36 million kWh per year. If these motors used our energy efficient deep groove ball bearings, the estimated savings would be 2,460 million kWh per year, which is equivalent to the total energy consumption of over three million Swedish households for one month,” he pointed out.

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