Indian mold maker Vasantha Group is eyeing more growth at its U.S. facility, purchasing land for an expansion there as it looks to further develop business in hot runner and automation systems.
The Hyderabad, India-based mold maker invested $7 million to open a mold support facility in West Chester, Ohio, in 2023 to complement operations it has in Austria and India.
An executive said in a recent interview that the company also bought land near the rented Ohio facility that could allow for more expansion.
"We have recently acquired a 5-acre land nearby and plan to build a bigger greenfield facility to support expansion plans," said Varun Reddy, director sales and foreign operations for Vasantha.
He said the company considers the U.S. a significant market and has seen solid growth there. That facility caters to the medical, pharmaceutical and fast-moving consumer goods packaging sectors.
"It is very significant in terms of our long-term U.S. plans," Reddy said. "Business for both the Indian and Austrian facilities are looking very promising from the U.S. market, thanks to the availability of the testing and servicing facility in U.S."
Currently, the Ohio site focuses on the U.S. market, but ultimately it's intended for the entire North and South American markets, he said.
"We also saw a demand for critical and high accuracy LSR and micromolds in the Cincinnati region," Reddy said. "Another reason was many in the medical and defense sectors needed tooling to be developed in the U.S. only because of confidentiality reasons."
Reddy said the micromolds and liquid silicone rubber molds made in Ohio are "not part of the Indian and Austrian facility portfolio."
When the Ohio plant launched, executives said it would build molds up to four cavities, with larger molds built either in Austria or in India.
The 16,000-square-foot Ohio facility also integrates automation and components from those other Vasantha locations, for U.S. customers.
At NPE, the company showed a fully automated syringe production unit with end-of-arm tooling, optical camera inspection and other components from its Savya Automation unit.
It will also be testing the waters on a new hot runner system it's developing, currently just for the Indian market, as well as metal injection molding processes.
"We have started selling an India-designed and -manufactured hot runner system called DynaFlow for the Indian market only at present," he said, noting that hot runners can be the single most expensive item in some injection molds.
"This market is at present dominated by a few multinational players," Reddy said. "After gaining confidence from the performance of these systems in the Indian market, a global launch will subsequently happen."
He said the company has also started manufacturing metal injection molded parts to meet demand in the defense, medical, auto and power sectors.
And, he said, the company has started to manufacture automation systems. The company's website said it's established its Savya Automation unit in India and Austria.
"We have also forayed into high-tech automation systems. That is a lateral integration to our present business of injection mold making," Reddy said. "A small design and development facility is launched in Austria. A production-scale manufacturing facility for these automation systems will eventually come up in India."
The company set up an Austrian mold making facility, VTW Gmbh Austria, in Waidhofen/Thaya in 2021. It has capacity of 50 high-cavitation molds annually with 70 employees.
"While the Indian facility was making a significant number of molds for the European market, we realized that we were also missing plenty more, as those customers wanted their molds to be made in Europe only," Reddy said.
The company's Indian subsidiary, Vasantha Tool Crafts Pvt. Ltd., was set up in 1989 in Hyderabad, in the southern Indian state of Telangana. The company said it has manufactured more than 4,000 high-precision, class 101 molds and supplies automated robotic cells and in-house vacuum treatment.
The global group has sales of $50 million annually from five sites, with sales in 40 countries.