To invest Rs 500 crores add 1300 jobs in its India Operations

Hyderabad, Aug 28 (UNI)Putzmeister Concrete Machines Pvt.Ltd. a 100% subsidiary of Germany's Putzmeister Concrete Pumps GmbH, today announced it would invest about Rs 500 crore and ramp up by 1300 over next four years to transform its operation in India into its global hub.

Aiming to become the leader in building specialist machinery in the world and the global provider of concrete pumps, tunnel machines, industrial pumps and mortar machines, the German-based Putzmeister AG has embarked on a major expansion exercise in India.

Its expansion initiatives in India over the next four years involves upgrading and enhancing capacity of its state of the art Goa plant, which will act as a sourcing centre for various components for the company's global manufacturing needs. The existing plant is spread across 1,00,000 Sq.Mts area in Verna Industrial Estate in Goa is being developed in phases, with phase-I costing 64.5 crore completed in October 2007. It will begin its phase-II with Rs-125 crore investments later this year.

"The company looks forward to completely developing all the five phases of the plant by 2012 on investing Rs 500 crore for a ten-fold capacity increase to 1000 stationary concrete pumps and 400 truck monitoring pumps units a year", according to Mr Andrej Hropot, Managing Director, Putzmeister Concrete Machines Pvt. Ltd. The company, he said plans to focus on the expansion of its manufacturing plant in Goa with the phase-II completed by June 2009 with Rs 125 crore investment to double its capacity to 200 units of stationary pumps and 60 truck-mounted pumps. The expansion will ensure jobs for another 1000 to 1300 technically qualified youth on-site.

"We are also further strengthening our existing network of sales and service outlets cross the country", he said.

The company expects a 40% growth year-on-year in India with projection of huge activity in Indian infrastsructure development for which USD 475 billion is expected to be invested.

The company did Rs 100 crore business in India since October 2007 when its Goa plant started production. The company is in talks with two financial institutions and partners in India to unveil in a couple of months its foray for rental and buy back arrangements with Indian vendors for exporting equipment to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It is also in talks with American equipment maker Caterpillar for a tie up to export pumps and engines to Middle East.

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