RÖCHLING
Opening ceremony for Indian production site / Double-digit growth forecast to continue for country's plastics industry
 Röchling COO Ludger Bartels cutting the ribbon at the new plant in India (Photo: Röchling) |
High performance plastics specialist Röchling Group (Mannheim / Germany; www.roechling.com) recently celebrated the opening of its first semi-finished thermoplastics production plant in India.
At a late-January ceremony attended by customers, distributors and employees, Ludger Bartels, COO of the Röchling Group, cut the ribbon to the new site in Savli, just outside of Vadodara in the state of Gujarat. The group’s CEO, Georg Duffner, was also on hand to unveil the cornerstone.
The German company plans for the new facility to produce 1,000 t of engineering plastics in 2014 and is already considering additional expansions. In addition, it expects to raise staff levels at the site from a current 40 to 65 within the year. Bartels, who is also head of the high performance plastics division at Röchling, said his company was banking on the country’s potential for strong growth in the coming few years. India’s plastics industry has already grown 13% annually over the last five years and experts anticipate it to continue to experience double-digit growth beyond 2017.
Construction of the new facility, which is situated on 35,000 m² of land purchased by the company, began in Q4 of 2012 and was completed in October of 2013, with machinery brought in from Germany. The manufacture of POM and PA 6 as well as sheets and profiles of ultra-high molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE) began at the close of the year.
Though Röchling has been active in India since 1998, when it set up an office in Mumbai, it was not until 2007 that it established a machining facility for its flagship “Lignostone” product, a wood-based high-performance insulation material used for high-voltage transformers. Based on the results achieved with the facility, the company decided to extend local production to thermoplastics.
The Mannheim-based group has some 7,500 employees working at 60 locations in 20 countries. In addition to its activities in high-performance plastics, the company has an Automotive Plastics division and focuses on processing high-grade plastics to fabricate semi-finished products, parts and systems used in a number of industrial applications. For the year ending 2012, the company had sales of roughly EUR 1.2 bn.
At a late-January ceremony attended by customers, distributors and employees, Ludger Bartels, COO of the Röchling Group, cut the ribbon to the new site in Savli, just outside of Vadodara in the state of Gujarat. The group’s CEO, Georg Duffner, was also on hand to unveil the cornerstone.
The German company plans for the new facility to produce 1,000 t of engineering plastics in 2014 and is already considering additional expansions. In addition, it expects to raise staff levels at the site from a current 40 to 65 within the year. Bartels, who is also head of the high performance plastics division at Röchling, said his company was banking on the country’s potential for strong growth in the coming few years. India’s plastics industry has already grown 13% annually over the last five years and experts anticipate it to continue to experience double-digit growth beyond 2017.
Construction of the new facility, which is situated on 35,000 m² of land purchased by the company, began in Q4 of 2012 and was completed in October of 2013, with machinery brought in from Germany. The manufacture of POM and PA 6 as well as sheets and profiles of ultra-high molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE) began at the close of the year.
Though Röchling has been active in India since 1998, when it set up an office in Mumbai, it was not until 2007 that it established a machining facility for its flagship “Lignostone” product, a wood-based high-performance insulation material used for high-voltage transformers. Based on the results achieved with the facility, the company decided to extend local production to thermoplastics.
The Mannheim-based group has some 7,500 employees working at 60 locations in 20 countries. In addition to its activities in high-performance plastics, the company has an Automotive Plastics division and focuses on processing high-grade plastics to fabricate semi-finished products, parts and systems used in a number of industrial applications. For the year ending 2012, the company had sales of roughly EUR 1.2 bn.
04.02.2014 Plasteurope.com [227415-0]
Published on 04.02.2014
German version of this article...