Photo (from left to right): Stefan Borgas, CEO, Parmod Sagar, President India, West Asia & Africa, David Schlaff, Board of Directors
RHI Magnesita today announced the operationalization of its regional R&D center in India. This is the fifth R&D facility in the company’s global R&D network after Leoben (Austria), Contagem (Brazil), Dalian (China) and York (United States). The company has also committed a Rs 400 Crore investment to expand its India production capacity.
On the inauguration of the new R&D facility, Stefan Borgas, CEO RHI Magnesita, said: “India is a strategic growth market for us. Our corporate strategy is well aligned with the Make in India call of the Indian government. We are investing in expanding our capacity and capability to develop our Indian operations as the R&D and manufacturing hub for the greater region of India, the Middle East and Africa.”
The company has earmarked a phased investment plan of Rs 400 Crore to increase production capacity of its existing plants in India at Bhiwadi (Rajasthan), Vizag (Andhra Pradesh) and Cuttack (Odisha). The investment would go towards brownfield expansion and automation of these facilities.
“We have recently scaled up the capacity of our Vizag plant by almost 30 percent recently with an investment of Rs 50 Crore. We are further working on starting production of certain high-end products in the Bhiwadi facility, which are currently imported into India from our European and American facilities. This would lead to import substitution of these products”, added Mr. Borgas.
Highlighting the importance of the new R&D facility, Parmod Sagar – Managing Director and CEO of RHI Magnesita India said, “The center will help us to better understand local market needs and to react faster to customer requirements. This is a world-class facility that will work closely with our global R&D network for local raw materials development, will provide solutions support for customer’s performance improvement projects and will support local manufacturing in the three India plants.”