Make-in-India: Finnish Firm Salcomp to build two factories in India

The largest mobile phone charger maker in the world Salcomp company is looking to set up factories in India. This move has come just after the central government has proposed incentives for local manufacturing of peripheral products.

• Finland based Salcomp is planning to establish two factories in the country with a combined peak capacity of 100 million units which thus will generate employment for close to 2,500 people. Sasikumar Gendham, the MD of Salcomp India said that the company is looking for space in lease in Noida DTA (Domestic Tariff Area) to set up one factory and for the other one the company is looking for space in South India. The construction work for the first factory will start from the second half of this year with a capacity of 40 million peak.
• Gendham also said that an estimated investment of Rs. 130-150 crore will be required to manufacture at such high scale. In the 2016-2017 Union Budget, the government has increased import tax on peripheral products such as chargers, batteries, headsets and speakers thus making a tax differentiation of about 27% when compared with locally manufacturing peripherals.  He further added that just making mobile chargers locally can create employment for close to 1 lakh of people which is therefore a huge number.
• After China, India is Salcomp’s largest manufacturing base for mobile chargers. The Finnish company established its factory in the country in 2007 in Nokia’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ) mainly to supply to local players like Samsung as well as to export the chargers. But supplies of chargers from its Sriperumbudur factory attracted a huge import duty of 29.44% thereby making supplies from this factory much more costly for phone manufacturers.
• Meanwhile, local companies including Micromax are trying to increase production. Gurgaon based Adit Infratel revealed that it is going to make an investment of Rs. 25 crore to start production of 60,000 mobile batteries  and 20,000 mobile chargers daily from its Manesar plant from the first week of April.

(Source: ET)