ETA General, which sells General brand of air-conditioners in India, is planning to set up a manufacturing facility in the northern part of the country.
“The project is in the drawing stage only. We might invest around Rs 100 crore, if we decide to set up the facility,” said M Ejazuddin, director and chief executive officer, ETA General Private Ltd.
The idea of a multi-region facility was to save logistics cost. Transportation cost alone comes to around Rs 1,000 on every unit, he added.
The company currently imports 70 per cent of the products from Fujitsu in Japan, while the remaining is produced at Puducherry, said M K Rao, general manager – sales and marketing. ETA General is a joint venture between ETA-Ascon, Dubai and Japan-based Fujitsu General.
Though the Puducherry facility has a capacity of 80,000 units, the utilisation is only 30 per cent.“Going forward we will look at either a new assembling or manufacturing facility or contract manufacturing to achieve our target of 250,000 units in the next three years,” said Ejazuddin.
The company is expecting about 67 per cent growth in sales volume this fiscal at 100,000 units against the previous year.
According to Ejazuddin, the AC market in India is expected to reach three million units by the end of current fiscal and touch five million by 2012.
The company has a market share of 4-5 per cent. To increase it further, it is planning to expand its dealer base to 1,000 from the now 600. “We have also set a target of Rs 800-900 crore turnover in the next three years. This year, we are likely to close with a turnover of Rs 325 crore,” he said.
