Videocon to buy Italian tubes unit of Thomson

The Rs 4,000 crore Videocon group is buying French electronics major Thomson group's colour picture tube plant in Anagni, Italy for an undisclosed sum.

The plant, which employs 1,500 people, can manufacture 3 million colour picture tubes of different sizes and has an annual sales of about euro250 million.

In a communication to the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Videocon group said that in continuation of its exercise of globalisation of activities in the field of consumer electronics, it has agreed to take over the Anagni plant..

"We are going to give details of the buy-out in the next four to five days," Videocon group chairman and managing director V N Dhoot told PTI.

He, however, declined to give the consideration of the deal and mode of purchase. Details were being worked out, he said.

The Videocon group intents to meet the funding requirements for this acquisition through an off shore arm, on "standalone" or "no recourse" basis. This would be Videocon's second acquisition in Italy.

Earlier, it had bought out the stake of its Italian joint venture partner Necchi Compressori, a compressor manufacturing firm.

Videocon had earlier evinced interest in setting up a manufacturing facility in Russia. The plan did not work out as the Russian government did not extend the promised business concession.

The Aurangabad-based group will eventually use the Anagni unit as a European hub for manufacturing consumer products and components that will be sold in the continent.

The Videocon group had said earlier that it plans to invest Rs 700 crore on a plant to make colour picture tubes and Rs 1,500 crore on a colour television glass project. Apart from its flagship brand Videocon, the group markets Sansui, Akai, Toshiba and York brands in India.

Thomson is selling the plant as it is changing focus from low-margin consumer electronics to high margin services such as DVD replication of post-production films, professional broadcasting equipment, offering TV set-top boxes to media groups and film studios and had decided to seek partnerships for its display business assets.