John Crane sets up Centre of Excellence in B'lore

Bangalore, Feb 23 (UNI) John Crane, world leader in designing engineering coupling and seals, today opened a new 1.5 million Pound manufacturing, service and support centre here.

The move represented a significant addition to the company's global network and in particular it added extra capacity to the ability of John Crane, part of the global engineering business Smiths Group Plc, to support its customers in the growing Indian and Asian markets.

John Crane India had a ten per cent market share in the Coupling and Seal Market estimated at around Rs 208 crore.

Keith Butler-Wheelhouse, Chief Executive Smiths Group Plc, speaking at the inauguration of the new facility today said ''Expanding in India moves us closer to our customers and closer to an area of high growth. This new Centre of Excellence also enables us to benefit from the pool of high quality people here in Bangalore.'' The company had underlined its confidence in the emerging Indian economy by selecting Bangalore as the location for its new Centre of Excellence, which in addition to serving local customers, would provide a variety of services to other parts of the John Crane network.

Located in Bangalore's Peenya industrial area the premises had been designed with flexibility and future expansion in mind. With an initial 25,000 sq ft factory capacity plus 20,000 sq ft of office accommodation, it housed 120 people with a range of world-class skills and abilities.

Later talking to reporters, John Crane Managing Director Mike Mansell said the new initiative was a crucial step for the company and it also reposed the faith it had in the workforce in India, especially Bangalore. ''The location for our new Centre of Excellence is an obvious choice for us since John Crane has had very positive experiences ever since we opened our first facility here in 1995.'' The city offered a pool of well-educated, engineering-oriented people to support the Centre's design activities. ''We have a great deal of confidence in their expertise and abilities and we look forward to a long and successful association with all of our employees,'' he added.

The Centre would also be a key-manufacturing hub for John Crane seals for the domestic market, fully assembled power transmission couplings for both the domestic and Asia Pacific region plus coupling components for assembly at other John Crane facilities, he said.

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