Gandhinagar, India — Chinese injection press manufacturer Haitian International Holdings Ltd. is building a new factory in India, and already has plans to open another.
"We have invested about INR 175 crore ($27.28 million) in building the new facility, where we will move in the first week of March," said Avadhesh Manjanwal, general manager (sales), for the company's Haitian Huayuan Machinery (India) Pvt. Ltd. subsidiary.
Manjanwal was interviewed on the opening day of the Plastindia 2018 trade show, held Feb. 7-12 in Gandhinagar.
Ningbo, China-based Haitian currently operates from rented space in Gujarat. Construction on the new factory, in Gujarat's Mehsana district, started in November 2016. It's being built on a 12.8-acre parcel, he said.
Manjanwal said the company will now increase production from about 40 servo-hydraulic molding machines a month to 150.
The government of India imposed steep tariffs on imported Chinese injection molding machines in 2009, prompting some Chinese investment in the country but also drawing protests from some in the molding industry worried about increasing equipment costs.
India's government renewed the tariffs in 2015, for five years.
Currently, Haitian offers presses ranging from 86 to 1,000 tons of clamping force. By the end of the year, it will expand the range in the Indian market by introducing two-platen machines ranging from 450 to 900 tons. Manjanwal expects to produce around 50 of those machines per year.
Manjanwal also said the company plans to have installed capacity of about 200 hydraulic presses a month by the end of the year. He said the new plant will focus on the domestic market initially, and exports to Africa and the Middle East in the future.
Haitian is also expanding its warehouse space in the market, buying a facility in North India, near Delhi, and it plans to open a second warehouse in Pune after the new plant starts operation, he said. Both are major auto making hubs.
Manjanwal also said the company has general plans to open a second manufacturing plant in the country, in Chennai, likely by 2023.
"The blueprint for the second plant is ready and we are now scouting for suitable location," he said. It would likely have similar capacity as the Gujarat plant, he said.
He said that India's injection molding press market is "estimated to be around 7,500 units annually, growing at 15 percent annually."
The company also imports about 10 all-electric presses from its Chinese operation to India each year, he said.
