Vendor Watch

Atlas Copco strengthens production in India

Our News Bureau - Pune

Atlas Copco has announced that it has modernized and concentrated manufacturing at its two production sites in India, creating local centers of competence for compressor and construction and mining technology. "India is one of our most important growth markets, where we have doubled in size over the last three years, " said Ronnie Leten, Business Area President for Compressor Technique, Atlas Copco. "By modernizing and concentrating our factories we will be able to introduce more new products to our customers, and it gives us a strong base to support future growth in the country." Investments have been made into machinery and new factory buildings amounting to approximately Rs 525 million (US$ 13 million). Production has in the process also been transferred between the sites, located in Pune and Nasik, allowing them to focus entirely on compressors and construction and mining equipment respectively.

The facility for production of compressors in Pune was inaugurated at a ceremony attended by Ronnie Leten , Business Area President for Compressor Technique, Atlas Copco; Mike Mustapha, Managing Director of Atlas Copco (India) and Bengt Kvarnback, Senior Advisor, Atlas Copco. Mike Mustapha said, "We have a long-term commitment to India and we are committed to our customer's superior productivity. The new production structure will result in substantial reduction in the manufacturing lead times and ultimately in much better deliveries for our customers."

"We have also invested in building a new world class logistics centre in Pune, which will be inaugurated in October this year with the aim of improving the availability of spare parts, which will lead to reducing the delivery time. A new service center for element rebuilding has been inaugurated in June 2007. This service centre is five times bigger in capacity than the earlier one. We are also introducing a new training centre focused on providing training to our customers and their employees," he added. Today the company has a nationwide network of 11 regional offices (North: Delhi, Chandigarh, Udaipur; West: Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur; South: Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai; East: Kolkata, Ranchi) ; 7 area offices and 10 resident offices. Atlas Copco currently has more than 1 200 employees in India. Orders received last year increased 46%, with strong growth in all business areas: compressor technique, construction and mining technique and industrial technique.