Samsung opens second facility, to invest $100 mn

Chennai: Samsung is shifting a major portion of its colour television assembly line from Noida to Chennai with the inauguration of its second manufacturing facility in India at the ELCOT Industrial Park in Sriperumbudur on Tuesday.

The Korean consumer electronics major has invested $30 million in the first phase of the facility, where it is starting operations with 350 employees on its rolls.

The next two phases of the facility, which has a production capacity of 1.5 million units per annum, will be completed by 2011, at an additional outlay of $70 million. The project will employ 2,500 people post-implementation, H B Lee, president and chief executive officer, Samsung south-west Asia, said.

R Zutshi, deputy managing director, Samsung India Electronics, said the Chennai facility would manufacture flat and ultra slim television sets in the 21-29 inch range and LCD TVs in the 19-32 inch range for the domestic and export markets. Samsung’s India revenues are poised to reach $1.3 billion in 2007-08, Lee said.

“Colour TV exports will commence from Sriperumbudur in the first half of next year,” Lee said, noting that Samsung is also considering manufacturing home appliances such as washing machines out of Chennai in the medium to long term.

The Chennai plant will have an annual production capacity of 1.5 million ultra slim (flat) colour TV sets, with an additional 0.3 million LCD TVs.

Zutshi said that south India had emerged as a major colour TV market for the company in the January-October period of this year when its share of the market touched 35.7 per cent.

“We will have the SAARC comity of nations such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka as target export markets for a start, before diversifying exports to other regions,” Zutshi said.

While Samsung has been transporting its colour TV sets to the southern markets from Noida, the Chennai facility is expected to bring in huge logistics savings for the company.

“The overall CTV market in India is expected to touch 13 million in 2008. As capacity picks up further, we would like to touch the 3-million production mark out of the Sriperumbudur facility,” he said.