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Exide's Bangladesh operations by April

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, Feb. 12

EXIDE Industries Ltd (EIL), one of the country's largest storage battery manufacturers, is planning to commence its business operations in Bangladesh by April. The company is initially expected to commence assembling batteries in Bangladesh and full-fled ged production will begin after a greenfield plant is put up.

Confirming the plans, the Chairman, Mr S.B. Ganguly, said the company was scheduling investments for the Bangladesh plant. However, he declined to give further details about the project.

``Initially, we will begin assembling batteries after shipping completely knocked-down kits (CKDs), but are looking at local manufacture at a later point of time,'' Mr Ganguly said.

He also mentioned that EIL is putting up a plant in Bawal, Haryana, near Delhi, to cater to its North Indian clients such as Maruti Udyog Ltd (MUL) and Honda Siel Cars Ltd. Currently, the Bawal unit is only charging batteries produced at the company's ot her facilities for onward supply as original equipment to car makers.

Mr Ganguly said that till recently, companies such as MUL and Honda Siel were being supplied from out of EIL's Pune unit.

``These companies, which follow `just in time manufacturing', want the batteries to be supplied within two to four days. Supply of the batteries used to take up to ten days to reach from our Pune unit,'' the EIL Chairman said.

The Bawal unit, where production was expected to commence by 2003, would add an installed capacity of another one million batteries, Mr Ganguly said.

He added that the company was currently producing about five million units and was approaching a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore.