Germany's Schmersal begins production from Pune plant

The company has invested Rs 65 cr in the greenfield facility with annual capacity of manufacturing 3.6 million safety switches

Schmersal, a Germany-based group specialising in safety for man-machine interface, has set up its first manufacturing plant in India at Ranjangoan near Pune and began its production from the plant.

The company has invested Rs 65 crore in this greenfield facility with the annual capacity of manufacturing 3.6 million safety switches. At Ranjangoan plant, Schmersal will begin with manufacturing 400 products and variants from the Group's range of 25,000 devices, and over time proposes to move to offering complete safety circuits and solutions.

Schmersal has now 7 manufacturing sites globally of which 4 are located in Germany and 1 each in Brazil, China and India. The Company plans to start exporting to its parent company from the first quarter of 2015 and then to ASEAN and Gulf countries.
 

The company plans to sell its made-in-India products in the Indian market initially, and later begin exports to both the parent company as well as to ASEAN and Gulf markets later.

It is also setting up an R&D team by the first quarter of 2015.

"The Indian industry is focusing more on making the workplace safer for its employees and in order to achieve this, they need complete technical solutions which should reach to customers through faster deliveries and services. The rationale behind setting up this facility in India is to provide safety solutions to Indian customers more quickly and locally".Right now we are assembling the products, but we plan to begin localisation and go to 100 per cent. The process of identifying vendors for local supply had begun," Heinz Schmersal, President, Schmersal Group said.

Sagar Bhosale, managing director, Schmersal India said, "As a pioneer and first to start manufacturing of machine safety products in India, we foresee huge opportunity for Schmersal India contributing in a big way to much lesser accidents in Industry and therefore play a lead role in the market."

The Indian subsidiary has been selling the Schmersal range of products in the country since 2007.

Its clients include Bharat Forge, Ferromatic Milakron, Johnson Lifts, L&T, LMW Group, OTIS, Schindler, Tata Steel, Thyssen, Trutzschler and Unilever.