Saint-Gobain Glass India, a subsidiary of the French glass manufacturing company, today inaugurated the second float glass plant at its Sriperumbudur complex, about 45 km south of Chennai.The second phase of the Sriperumbudur complex was inaugurated by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today.The company has invested Rs 800 crore in the second plant, which takes the total investment in the complex to Rs 1,400 crore to make it the single largest glass complex in Saint Gobain family to be set up in recent decades. The company has rechristened the complex as the World Glass Complex.Jean-Louis Beffa, chairman & CEO of Saint Gobain Group, told a press conference the group was impressed with the growth of the Indian arm, and would put India as a priority zone for further investments over the next five years. The combined capacity of the Sriperumbudur complex is 1,500 tonne of float glass per day. As part of its second phase of expansion, the company has set up two automotive glass processing lines - one for windshields for half a million cars and another for tempered glass for one million cars. As these plants are modular, the capacity can be scaled up to address the needs of two million cars. About 15% of the output from this automotive plant would be exported.B Santhanam, managing director of Saint-Gobain India, said the company was looking at capturing a domestic market share of 36% in 2006. Its marketshare in 2005 was 26%.The glass industry has grown at 10% plus over the last four years. The total size of the market was about Rs 1,700 crore last year, and is expected to go over Rs 2000 crore during the current year.
