BANGALORE: EPCOS India, a wholly owned subsidiary of Germany-based EPCOS AG,
is planning to make its Indian manufacturing plants at Nasik and Kalyani, as the
centers of excellence in capacitors and ferrite cores, respectively.
India’s second largest exporter of components at Rs 135 crore, EPCOS plan
to relocate the production line of its dry core power capacitors from Germany to
Nasik in Maharastra. These products are basically used for power factor
correction in industrial electronics. The company is also transferring the radio
frequency interference suppression capacitors from its plant in Spain to Nasik,
making it the only plant for the company in the world to manufacture these
capacitors. Production of metallized film capacitors for consumer electronics,
telecommunications and lighting applications is also being relocated from Spain
to Nasik.
At the ferrites plant in Kalyani in West Bengal, production capacity and the
product portfolio is also being increased. EPCOS mulls continuing investment and
technology transfer to enable a broader range of ferrite components for
telecommunications, industrial and consumer electronics. The company expects the
Kalyani plant to become a center of competence in powder technology, process
engineering and eventually R&D in the next three to four years.
EPCOS claims a share of about 10 per cent of the Indian market for passive
electronic components, which currently estimated at Rs 1,200 crore. The driving
factors of the market are the consumption of the passive electronic components
by consumer electronics, 45 per cent, telecommunications, 18 per cent,
industrial electronics and data processing with 15 per cent each.
With a total investment of Rs 204 crore made, since 1995, the company plans
to investment about Rs 12 crore on capital investment, to be induced for the
expansions of these plants. Although the company anticipates a difficult year in
fiscal 2002, sales in India are expected to rise by 9 per cent.