Videocon Invests Rs 500 Cr For Glass Shells Capacity Expansion

Videocon happens to be the country’s only manufacturer of glass shells for television picture tubes. “With the recent hike in capacity, we are going to become the sixth largest manufacturer of glass shells in the world,” said group sources.

The capex that has been spread over the past two years has been entirely through internal accruals. The company expects the expansion programme to be completed by November this year.

“Our plant at Bharuch will have the largest capacity in a single location across the globe,” said group sources. The Videocon group which had aggressively invested in backward integration and got into manufacturing of components, today, claims to have 30 per cent of its group’s profitability coming from the components business. So far, the group has invested Rs 2,000 crore in the glass shell manufacturing business.

The glass manufacturing company was amalgamated with Videocon International in 1997-98. Earlier, the group had joined hands with Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilisers to set up the glass manufacturing unit at Chavai, in the Bharuch district of Gujarat, as a 100 per cent import substitution project. The company had a technical collaboration with Techneglas Inc, USA, world leaders in glass shell technology.