Electronics products major V-Guard Industries Ltd (VGIL) plans to double capacity at its house wiring and cable factory in Kashipur in Uttaranchal from 2.75 lakh coils to 5.50 lakh coils a month, reports the Times of India. The company has set aside capex of Rs 250 million for fiscal 2013, of which Rs 150 million will be invested in ramping up capacity at the Kashipur plant.
Besides Kashipur, VGIL operates a house wiring and cable lining production centre at Chavadi near Coimbatore. Chavadi also has a solar water heater production facility and a low tension cable factory. A second solar water heater manufacturing plant is also coming up at Perundurai near Erode.
“Rs 3 crore will be spent out of our capex allocation to set up a warehousing facility at Perundurai on five acres of land. We are also actively scouting for warehousing locations for our entire range of products in Kochi and surrounding areas,” VGIL MD Mithun Chittilappilly said.
On the company’s foray into the domestic switchgear market, which includes Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers (ELCBs), Mithun said a pilot project had been carried out in central Kerala prior to launching the switchgear and ELCBs. “The response in central Kerala has been positive and we will launch the product in north and south Kerala in the next six months, before expanding to the north Indian markets,” Mithun said. VGIL expects the nascent switchgear business to contribute Rs 10 crore to the company’s top line in fiscal 2013. It is currently developing a supply chain and sensitizing prospective vendors to various quality issues before enlisting them into its switchgear dealer network.
“We have outsourced the manufacturing to three facilities in Hyderabad and Jalgaon in Maharashtra. A third vendor will roll out switchgear for us out of Uttaranchal. Outsourcing the manufacturing process offers us savings on excise duty of upto 10 per cent,” Mithun said.
