Katerra to spend USD 100 Mn for manufacturing plant in Hyd

Katerra, a Silicon Valley-based design and technology driven construction firm, Wednesday held the ground breaking ceremony of its first fully integrated off-site manufacturing plant for prefabricated building components and fittings here with an investment of USD 100 million.

Ash Bhardwaj, President Asia and Middle East, Katerra in a press conference said the construction of the facility is expected to be completed by March 2020 and will deliver eight million square feet of building components every year through robotic assembly line production.

"Apart from our factory at Krishnagiri near Bangalore, we now have a factory in Hyderabad to service our clients in the Southern part of India.

The investment would be USD 100 million (Rs 700 crore)," he said at a press conference.

After setting up factory campus at Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu and a movable onsite factory in Lucknow, this will be Katerras second state-of-the-art, automated factory in India, he said.

The factory will help bring Katerras unique global technology solutions to construct residential projects, commercial office buildings, hotels, malls, hospitals, schools and industrial parks across Telangana.

Bhardwaj said the company has invested around USD 400 million in India on manufacturing and research and development and completed 20 projects involving around 10 million square feet over the last two years.

It has orders for another 10 m sqft to be completed by next year.

He said going forward the company has plans to invest in setting up factories in the Mumbai-Pune region in the later part of the year, followed by a plant in NCR to cover the North market.