With regular power cuts leading to a surge in the demand for inverters, Exide Industries is planning to strengthen its position in the segment either through greenfield expansion or acquisition.
The leading maker of the batteries, a key component of uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and inverter, recently forayed into the manufacturing and marketing of inverters for home usage acquiring a manufacturing unit at Roorkie, Uttarakhand in January, 2012 with an investment of Rs 17.5 crore These inverters are being marketed under firm's brands like Exide, SF and Ceil.
Following the acquisition, Exide has already invested Rs 10 crore at the Roorkee plant, manufacturing 30,000 inverters a month.
“While demand for automotive batteries is slowing, only exception is the inverter segment. There is sudden surge of demand, mostly in the southern part of the country. We want to tap this demand,” T V Ramanathan, managing director and chief executive officer of the company said on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting here.
“We are open to both greenfield expansion and even acquisitions if the need arises,” he added.
Meanwhile, the company would also invest Rs 270 crore as capital expenditure during the fiscal. Nearly, 70 per cent or Rs 190 crore will be on machinery and equipment, pollution control and other paraphernalia. Exide is expecting good growth for July to September quarter of the fiscal.
“The quarter should be good. I do not think that lead prices will go up in the future. While there may be pressures on the OE market, replacement sales will pick up,” PK Kataky, director-automotive, said.
According to him, the company has been able to regain its market share in auto-replacement segment following capacity expansion across all plants in the last fiscal.
“We lost some market share to our competitors in the last fiscal. But we are regaining that. We have sufficient supply chain,” he added.
