Mumbai — German caps and closure manufacturer Bericap GmbH & Co. KG is doubling the size of its facility in Pune, India, to meet increased local demand and expand its product range by manufacturing more goods from its global portfolio, a company executive said.
"This is an expansion of the existing site," said Rajesh Pantsachiv, general manager of Bericap India Pvt. Ltd. "Currently, the plant operates on a 5,000-square-foot area [with] an additional 6,500-square-foot plot acquired in the neighborhood to build a new building, to more than double the plant size."
The expansion will let the company expand its product range and bring in more products from other markets.
"The idea is to widen the product range in India and to introduce products from the global portfolio that are currently available in the German, European and the U.S. markets," said Pantsachiv, in an interview at the Injection, Blow, Roto & PET Molding International Summit 2018, held in Mumbai in early July.
The highly automated plant would likely open in January. Bericap declined to share investment and capacity details.
A 2017 study from the Confederation of Indian Industry said the domestic food and beverage segment is expected to triple in size from $369 billion to $1.142 trillion by 2025.
One focus of the Bericap facility would be on innovative lightweight products with anti-counterfeiting features.
India's caps and closure sector is growing at 8 to 10 percent annually and the largest beverage segment, bottled water, requires about 15 billion closures yearly. The bottled water market is expected to grow at more than 20 percent a year, which is forcing more investment toward higher productivity.
"Increasing automation in filling lines are also forcing caps and closure sector to get more organized and standardized," he said.
India is not the company's only recent international expansion: it opened a new Iranian site near Tehran in 2017, it plans a new production site north of Mexico City in mid-2018 and has opened a warehouse in Nairobi, Kenya.