Fuji Electric India (FEI), the wholly owned subsidiary of a century-old Fuji Electric Co, Japan, has on Wednesday inaugurated its state-of-the-art and environment-friendly factory in Chennai to support the automation division of its business.
According to Yosuke Ishizaka, Managing Director, FEI, the company has invested INR 150 crore to set up the 65,000 sq ft plant, which will help the company produce about 120,000 variable frequency drives (VFDs) and over 200,000 printed circuit boards (PCBs) a year.
The automation division of FEI has been developing solutions for factory and process automation, instrumentation, electrical distribution, industrial control products and Human Machine Interface. It caters to the process automation requirements of several industrial segments, including automotive. With the new plant in place, the company will also look at catering to the needs of several new segments, including data centres, cranes, metro rails, HVAC, and heavy industries.
The current capacity expansion will grow FEI's turnover to about INR 1,500 crore by FY25, from INR 790 crore registered in FY22. The company hopes to end the current fiscal with a total revenue of INR 1,050 crore.
The fully automated manufacturing facility will produce VFDs in the range of 0.4 kW to 75 kW as of now. Plans are on to scale it up to 710 kW.
Speaking on the need for capacity enhancement, Shivaji Waghmare, CEO, FEI, said, “The first is to invest in latest manufacturing technology in close collaboration with our parent company in Japan to provide high quality products. The second is to increase capacity ahead of market requirements to meet our customers’ growing demand.”
The capacity expansion will also help the company improve its market share to about 15% from the current 10%, in the market size of INR 10,000 crore (equally divided between its UPS and automation-related businesses).
Moreover, it will also enhance its revenue from exports. Currently, FEI gets about 8-10% of its revenue from exports. “Though the percentage will remain the same, the absolute value of exports will increase in the next two years. We are looking at several new markets, including Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa markets,” he added.
Waghmare said the present capacity expansion would reach saturation in two to three years. After that, the company will look at setting up a greenfield facility in Chennai or Pune, where the second India plant is located. Both existing factories are now operating on leased plots, and the proposed greenfield plant will be owned by FEI, he added.
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