Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd. is setting up its high-tech, advanced refrigerator manufacturing facility with an investment of $75 million at Sriperumbudur in Chennai.
The plant, to be inaugurated on Saturday, will be the second refrigerator facility for Samsung in India (first unit is located in Noida) and the sixth in the world. The refrigerator facility will be formally inaugurated by Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister M. K. Stalin and Korea Ambassador Kim Joong Keun.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, J. S. Shin, President and Chief Executive Officer, Samsung South West Asia, said the new facility would have an installed capacity of 1.2 million units annually and would provide employment for about 500 people.
The Chennai refrigerator portfolio would complement the product at Noida.
Mr. Shin said beyond the refrigerator manufacturing facility, the company had earmarked an investment of around Rs. 350 crore for its Sriperumbudur facility over the next five years.
The company was targeting the overseas markets and wanted to make Sriperumbudur facility as a “manufacturing hub” for Samsung.
The company inaugurated the Chennai facility in 2007 with an investment of $25 million for producing flat television panels, LCD television sets and air conditioners.
On exports, he said the company would initially export a limited number of products from the Sriperumbudur facility by the second quarter of next financial year and it would be to neighbouring countries. With the Chennai and Noida facilities, Samsung would produce 2.6 million units of refrigerators annually.
R. Zutshi, Deputy Managing Director, Samsung India, said in the initial phase, it would be rolling out 29 frost-free and direct cool models in four different capacities from the Chennai facility. New models and capacities would be added over the next few months. Mr. Zutshi said Samsung had also planned to produce washing machines and mobile phones from the Sriperumbudur facility besides expanding capacity of mobile phones at Noida with additional investment.
Mr. Shin said during the current year, the company had targeted revenue of $3.2 billion and it had registered $2.2 billion last year. Of the $2.2 billion, the refrigeration segment alone contributed $900 million. Globally, Samsung's reported revenues were $116.8 billion and of this its India operations contributed about 2.5 per cent. Mr. Shin hoped that it would go up by 5 per cent by 2013.
When asked about the Sriperumbudur belt facing a series of labour issues in the Korean automaker Hyundai and the electronic equipment manufacturer Foxconn facilities, Mr. Shin said Samsung treated the employees as a family and despite having operations in Noida they did not have any issue with labourers there. He said in their Indian facilities, 80 per cent of the staff was permanent employees.
The Chennai and Noida facilities had about 3,000 employees, while in their research and development units in Delhi and Bangalore, it was about 5,000 employees.
