Bpl Mulls Setting Up Uk Unit For European Thrust

Consumer electronics major BPL Ltd is looking at the possibility of setting up or acquiring a manufacturing unit in the UK to cater to the European market.

As part of its efforts to go global with its BPL brand name, the company is also looking at buying out distribution networks.

The overseas facility will make colour television sets, colour monitors, alkaline batteries and a few home appliances, says Ajit G Nambiar, vice chairman and managing director of the company.

Addressing newspersons here after launching the company's new range of products in the city yesterday, he said this is in response to a fall in exports to this key market last year.

The main competitor for the company in Europe is Turkey which is entitled to duty-benefits as it entered the EU common market. BPL, thus, lost out when exports of colour televisions declined from 38,856 sets in the 1996-97 to 23,635 set in the next year.

This year, the company has pegged an export target of Rs 250 crore for the current year against a Rs 89.05 crore achieved in the previous year. Alkaline batteries, computer monitors and colour television sets being the main export items.

Investment in such a venture will not be very high as it will first be set up as an assembling plant. It will be setting up a facility primarily to meet the local-content requirements of the European Union Common Market.

In this context, Nambiar mentioned the tie-up the company already has with Express Computers in California in the US to sell its colour monitors.

Overseas manufacturing facilities in the other key market, the Middle East, however, has been ruled out because of the geographical proximity, he said.

The company spends Rs 100 crore every year on revamping its existing product range and another Rs 100 crore on brand building.

A recent survey, it may be recalled, ranked BPL as the most admired marketing company in the durables segment for 1997.