The Hindu Business Line : Gudel to open manufacturing unit in Pune today

The factory, with an investment of $2.5million, would be manufacturing industrial robots, gantry, systems with articulated robots. The first robot is all set to leave the factory premises to its customer - the Baroda-based Elecon - for loading CNC lathes and the second would leave next month to Saint Gobain for glass handling.

Talking to Business Line, Mr Sunil Raibaghi, Managing Director, said the Pirangut factory is spread over three acres and has a design centre, validation centre, area for trial and testing of the manufactured robots as also special system for simulation.

The company had set up its operations in Pune in November 2004.

Mr Raibaghi said the company has also put up a manufacturing centre for accessories required for robots.

He said the production capacity of the plant would be 30 to 40 systems per year. He said the robots would be in three modes - for machine testing that is for loading and unloading of parts, handling parts for the different processes and for bottle packaging.

He also said it would be looking at requirements in other segments such as food processing, packaging and spatial measurements, which the parent company is already into.

Mr Raibaghi said Gudel linear robots are available in one, two and three axes modules as also additional three-rotary axes modules. They are built using standard Gudel components and could transport loads from10 kg to 3,600 kg. It also offers various kinds of rotary axes units, grippers and end effectors as a standard module.

He said Gudel already has installations in the country at Hyundai, Saint Gobain, Asahi, Tata Motors and Samtel among others. Recently, it supplied 300 m gantry to Bharat Forge for 230 kg crankshaft manufacturing, he said.

Asked about the market size, Mr Raibaghi said it was around $50-60 million and the company was targeting $20 million within the next five years. He added that it would also start catering to the export markets within two years.

Founded in 1954 in Langenthal, Switzerland, Gudel has manufacturing plants in the US, Germany, France, Korea, and the UK. With the key strength of micro-engineering, Gudel delivers about 45 kilometres of gantries per annum.

Today, its end users include organisations such as DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Audi, Hyundai, Comau, Ford, General Motors etc.