In India, Saint-Gobain is targeting sustainable manufacturing and sustainable construction with the aim of doubling sales by 2019. The company also aims to become the reference for sustainable habitat in the domestic market.
Saint-Gobain, a global leader in the habitat and construction market, plans to increase its presence in the Indian market, and is looking at doubling sales to INR 10,000 crore by 2019.
The French company, which is celebrating its 350th anniversary, entered India in 1996, and has 20 manufacturing sites and around 4,900 employees in India.
“We believe we can play an important role in shaping the future by designing, manufacturing and distributing building and high-performance materials, which provide innovative solutions to meet the challenges of growth, energy efficiency and environment protection,” Anand Mahajan, General Delegate for India, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh, Saint-Gobain, said.
In India, Saint-Gobain is targeting sustainable manufacturing and sustainable construction. Besides achieving its sales target, the company aims to become the reference for sustainable habitat in India.
“Our more recent investments have been in new facilities to serve global markets and this trend is likely to continue,” B. Santhanam, President and Managing Director, Flat Glass, South Asia, Malaysia and Egypt for Saint-Gobain, said. The company makes flat glass for construction and automotive industries, high performance materials and construction products. Glass accounts for more than half of the group’s business.
Exports of value-added products accounted for 15-18% cent of sales in the last few years, he said.
Saint-Gobain set up an R&D centre two years ago in Chennai. It employed around 80 scientists working on ‘Frugal Innovation’, Mahajan said. “The work is focused understanding buildings and building sciences in ‘hot, humid and noisy’ countries. We have filed five patents and work closely with IITs. We will eventually have 200 scientists,” Santhanam said.
The company was planning to set up facilities to cater to the global markets. It invested around INR 2,300 crore in the last four years in the glass business, Mahajan said, adding that, “over the next four years, we will invest at least as much as we did in the last four years.”
Recent investments were in increasing float glass capacity by setting up facility in Bhiwadi in 2014. It will commission the first phase of an export-oriented refractories plant near Coimbatore in 2015, while the second phase will come up in an SEZ. “The Coimbatore facility could become the largest in the world,” Mahajan said, adding that an investment in a plaster-board plant this year was planned although the location was yet undecided.