Bijoy Ghosh

Unveiling growth plans: Mr H.B. Lee, President and CEO, Samsung South West Asia Regional Headquarters, and Mr Ravinder Zutshi, Deputy Managing Director, Samsung Electronics India Pvt Ltd, at a press conference in Chennai on Tuesday. —

Our Bureau

Chennai, Nov. 13 Samsung India Electronics is likely to end the calendar year with revenues of around $1.3 billion, a 20 per cent growth over last year. The company hopes to double its exports to around Rs 400 crore next year, according to its Deputy Managing Director, Mr Ravinder Zutshi.

Next year, revenue growth will be much more with the company’s Sriperumbudur plant going on stream. (The plant was inaugurated today by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Mr M. Karunanidhi.) “We’ve grown 20-27 per cent over the last six years, and will maintain this for the next few years,” he told newspersons.

The new plant, located in the Sriperumbudur Hi-Tech special economic zone, around 25 km west of Chennai, will be the company’s second facility (after Noida) in India. It will have an annual capacity of 1.5 million units for flat televisions and 0.3 million units per year for LCD television.

Samsung will also manufacture 21” and 29” flat and ultra slim models and LCD models with screen sizes between 19” and 32” at the new plant. It will consider manufacturing home appliances like fully automatic washing machines by early next year, Mr Zutshi said.

One of the advantages of having the Sriperumbudur plant will be the saving on logistics costs in transporting products from Noida to southern markets, which contribute nearly 36 per cent of the company’s all-India colour television sales and is the largest contributor to the company’s consumer electronic business, he said.

The company also plans to export colour televisions from Sriperumbudur to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh starting next year, said Mr H.B. Lee, President and CEO, Samsung South West Asia Regional Headquarters.

Samsung India will invest a total of $100 million (Rs 400 crore) over the next five years in Sriperumbudur. So far, it has invested $30 million (Rs 120 crore). Currently, around 350 employees are working in the plant, and the number will increase to around 2,500 once the plant works to full capacity in four years, said Mr Zutshi.

In November 2006, the company signed an agreement with the Tamil Nadu Government for the facility, and the ground-breaking ceremony was held in February this year.

Asked about the official data released yesterday that said that the consumer goods industry was on the decline, Mr Zutshi expressed surprise and emphasised that the industry has seen the best growth this year of 12-14 per cent so far with every durables category seeing growth, whereas in the past five years the growth has been just 7-8 per cent a year. Mr Zutshi said that the data collection was not capturing the correct industry trends.

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