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| Trinity Mirror - Jul 4, 2001 |
| SEC - Silver Jubliee Celebrations |
| Sanmar group expands its foundry capacity |
| Chennai. July 4: |
| Sanmar Engineering Corporation (SEC), part of Sanmar group, has further expanded its foundry capacity through Sanmar Alloy Castings (SACL) taking advantage of the shake out in the domestic industry and growing demand for special castings. |
| In order to meet the growing demand from engineering industries and export market, SACL has doubled the capacity of steel and stainless castings to 6000 tonnes a year. The foundry has become a globally cost competitive and assured supplier of the critical raw material. |
| Now, N. Sankar, Chairman, Sanmar group said, SACL is slated to commission next week a new investment foundry for the manufacture of precision castings. The facility at Viralimalai near Trichy with a capacity of 50 tonnes has been set up at a cost of Rs.7.5 crore. |
| At the silver jubilee celebration of SEC in Chennai on Saturday, its successful partnerships with global leaders (with competing businesses) was appreciated by distinguished speakers. |
| B. Narayan, Group Senior Executive Vice-President, Reliance Industries (RIL) said the group is one of the major customers for SEC in sourcing its products. In the last 20 years. Reliance group would have given business worth $90 million of which Rs.130 crore was sourced from the onshore operations of SEC ventures and $40 million from their offshore partners. He said that rather than having a collaboration of convenience, SEC had genuine and bonafide partnership arrangements. Referring to the dilemma RIL faced in sourcing control valves for polypropylene plant from SEC (instead of importing them) Narayan said that time the US partner, Fisher had readily agreed to underwrite performance both in terms of quality and delivery. |
| George A. Shedlarski, Vice-President, Flowserve Corporation, US said SEC floated the first joint-venture in 1976 with Durametallic Corporation (now fully owned by Flowserve). He traced the successful partnership to their mutual trust, professional approach and shared vision. |
| N. Rangachary, Chairman, Insurance Regulatory Authority of India (IRA) hailed the visionary zeal and boldness with which Sankar and his brother N. Kumar had pioneered the art of floating joint ventures during the licence raj and when foreign partners were offered only minority stake. |
| Sankar was proud over the growth of engineering group which was the first business he had started on his own (before coming at the helm of Chemplast Sanmar). |
| SEC, though not a legal entity, has grown into a big corporation with a turnover of $2.5 billion and employing 1,400 persons. Export turnover, which was only 11 per cent in 1996-97, is expected to touch 35 per cent (Rs.100 crore) this year. |
| N. Kumar, Vice-Chairman Sanmar group said the joint ventures have been built with the technology support of outstanding partners. |
| Steady growth |
| Sanmar Engineering Corporation, which had started as a modest enterprise in 1976, had grown into 13 companies and ten joint ventures with worldclass American corporations, said N. Sankar. He was addressing employees, their families and other invitees on the occasion of the 25th Factory Day celebrations of the group at Karapakkam near here. |
| Sankar paid tributes to the foresight of S.R. Seshadri, former Executive Director, SEC, who had identified mechanical seals as a critical equipment in the process industry for manufacture by SEC. |
| The SEC Managing Director, M.N. Radhakrishnan, recalled how Seshadri was instrumental in identifying a succession of related products of vital importance to the process industry and led SEC to the world leaders in those technologies. |
| Mike Sandling, Executive Vice-President, Strategic Development, Xomox Corporation, spoke of his experience of setting up the Xomox facility at Viralimalai and expressed satisfaction at the way the joint venture relationship had grown into one of mutual respect and trust. |
| Reg Ingram, Vice-President, Supply Chain Management, Tyco International, spoke of his earlier association with Indian business when he set up a facility at Baroda and near Chennai, before Tyco took over the Crosby Valve business of FMC Corporation, U.S. and decided he was the man to be involved in the joint venture with SEC they decided to continue. |
| Dan Burton, Vice-President, Fisher Asia, said when Emerson Electric took over the Fisher business, they directed Fisher to go in for a partnership with Sanmar based on their experience with Sanmar. This group’s transparency, ethics and value systems came in for praise from all the foreign partners’ representative who also complimented SEC’s engineers and workers. |
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