Grupo Antolin plans facility at Chennai

Will invest euro 8 million on the plant

Spanish automobile components major Grupo Antolin plans to set up its third manufacturing facility in India near Chennai, at an investment of 8 million Euro.

The firm has a unit in Ranjangaon, near Pune and another one near Delhi, which is a joint venture with Krishna Maruti.

The ¤2-billion Grupo Antolin is a leading automotive components manufacturer, specialising in seating systems, overhead liners and door systems.

Grupo Antolin's managing director for Asia and Africa operations Pablo Baroja told media persons after inaugurating the company's engineering design centre (EDC) on Tuesday that the decision to set up a plant near Chennai was made in view of the requirements of customers like Hyundai.

"The plant will be operational in the year 2007," informed Baroja and further added, "the Pune EDC will be the hub for engineering design support for Grupo Antolin worldwide and we expect it to grow 30-32 per cent every year."

"The design activity, which the company started in the year 2002, with just a couple of engineers has been now scaled up to involve 50 engineers. The team has now moved to the engineering design centre, established at an investment of Rs 6 crore," said Vilas Unavane, Grupo Antolin's chief executive officer for India. The centre will work on design requirements for the company's products being developed and manufactured in other countries as well as for other manufacturers in the automotives space, Unavane said.

Ajey Apte, head of the design centre said the teams will work concurrently with the teams in the company's other design centres, as well as design centres of the customers. "This will help us get significant cost and time advantages as we can use the time difference to ensure faster delivery," Apte said. He said the company also works closely with the customer teams and in fact, places its design engineers at customer sites to offer instant and live involvement.

"Among such customer location is the Mazda car plant in China," he pointed out.

Apte said the strength of the EDC will be increased to 100 in the next one year's time as the company intends to undertake design exports projects aggressively. "About 90 per cent of the work done here, is and will be for the customers in the global market," he stressed.

Grupo Antolin's customers include all automobile manufacturers in India and the company is participating in all their future manufacturing programmes, Unavane said, adding, "We have worked with Tata Motors for their forthcoming Rs 1 lakh car and our components will be tested along with the trials of the car."

Unavane said the company's turnover from India operations is Rs 30 crore and the projected growth is 10-15 per cent per year.