French multinational Schneider Electric on Friday announced plans to infuse around Rs 350-400 crore in its Indian subsidiary Luminous Power Technologies to double its manufacturing capacity and ramp up the solar business. With these funds, Luminous will expand the capacity of its seven existing plants in the country, and set up two new manufacturing plants, generating direct employment for more than 2,000 people and supporting over 10,000 others, it said in a statement. A significant part of the investment will be focused on Luminous Power’s solar business, its fastest-growing segment, which it expects to constitute 40 per cent of the company’s sales by 2025.
The funds will also help bolster the company’s backward integration philosophy of key components, which is expected to come alive in the next 12-18 months. The investments will be used to pursue aggressive growth plans of Luminous, which entail doubling the battery and inverter production capacity, generating new employment opportunities, and ramping its solar business, the statement said. With the fresh funding, Schneider is planning to increase Luminous’ annual battery manufacturing capacity by 63 per cent to 5.1 million by 2025 from the present 3.12 million. Besides, it is also looking to develop a new plant that will support the production of Tall-Tubular Batteries (TTB).
The plant will be set up in two phases, the first phase will see the manufacturing capacity of 30,000 TTBs, which will be further ramped up to 65,000 in the second phase. Luminous is also eyeing to direct Rs 185 crore towards building the capacity towards upgrading technology for battery and next-generation inverter manufacturing. Together with Schneider Electric, we plan to complement this growth vision by investing almost Rs 400 crore to expand our manufacturing capabilities and specialised business divisions. This will also help us maintain our Atmanirbhar and Make in India principles of backward integration and employment generation, Luminous Power Technologies Managing Director Vipul Sabharwal said. In 2011, Schneider had acquired 74 per cent share of Luminous Power and later acquired the balance 26 per cent in 2017.
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