Samtel moots Rs 310 crore expansion plan for CRT manufacturing

Kanpur, June 6 (UNI) Samtel Group, India's largest integrated manufacturer of display devices, will be investing Rs 310 crore on capacity expansion for its television picture tube manufacturing.

The Group has also chalked out plans for commercial production of Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) screens for mobile phones within the next two years.

The company also has plans to foray into the manufacturing of plasma screen and flat panels.

''The total picture tube capacity of Samtel will reach about 10 million units next year from the current level of half-a-million. In the current year, the overall picture tube manufacturing capacity should be over 8.5 million units,'' said Mr Satish Kaura, Chairman and Managing Director of Samtel Color Ltd (SCL) while unveiling the Samtel Centre for Display Technologies (SCDT) at IIT, here.

Mr Kaura further said that after achieving the 10 million units production mark, the company is expected to export about 3.3 million units next year.

The company has plans for the commercial production of Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) screens within the next 18-20 months, for which it has developed technology in collaboration with IIT, Kanpur and Department of Science and Technology.

A dedicated team of engineers and SCDT, IIT Kanpur constituted the core team which is responsible to execute this (OLED) project within three years at an approximate cost of Rs 16 crore. The Centre has been working on this flagship research project on Organic LEDs since 2002.

OLEDs are used as commercial full colour displays in applications such as digital cameras and mobile phones.

For the emerging market of large area flat panel displays, Samtel has set up dedicated facilities to develop Plasma Display Panels.

Having developed working prototypes, Samtel plans to start pilot production soon. The Group has also developed the ability to design and set up hi-tech manufacturing facilities for its products.

The Group uses its cutting edge technology and design capabilities to manufacture high performance products, which operate at very high standards of reliability under extremely adverse environmental conditions.

Employing over 6000 people in eight world class factories, Samtel Group has a turnover of approximately Rs 14 billion per annum.

UNI BBS VJ KN1637