Expecting a serious shortage of glass used in the colour picture tube (CPT) industry worldwide, Samcor Glass of India, a three-way joint venture between the US-based Corning, Samsung and Samtel group,..
Expecting a serious shortage of glass used in the colour picture tube (CPT) industry worldwide, Samcor Glass of India, a three-way joint venture between the US-based Corning, Samsung and Samtel group, has decided to advance its Rs 450 crore investment in setting up a greenfield plant for manufacturing panels for CPTs. The company was earlier scheduled to start construction in 2002 and during the interim period, the plan was to import panels from the Samsung facility at Korea. Instead, it now plans to go into production by September 2002. The decision to start manufacturing panels was taken at a meeting of the partners at Seoul recently. The construction is expected to begin shortly, sources said. A major reason for the expected shortage is that most CTV manufacturers are now moving to large screen CTVs, which use up large glass tonnage. Super flat TVs are known to use up 20-30% more glass. Explaining the rationale of the decision, company officials said that the international market is currently experiencing a serious shortage of glass for CTV tubes, which is expected to become more acute in the coming years. Additionally, there is only one local manufacturer of this product and the domestic capacity is not adequate to meet the burgeoning demand for CTV sets in India, they said and added that half of the requirements of glass in the country are at present imported. Of late, there has been little addition in glass capacity worldwide. Company sources say it has also decided to invest Rs 110 crore in setting up a facility to make colour glass funnels for CTV tubes at its existing black and white glass facility. Production of colour funnels will start in September. The company will have a capacity to manufacture up to 6 million sets of CTV panels and funnels. The surplus capacity in the funnel tank will be used to manufacture about 2.5 million glass parts for B&W TV picture tubes. Over time as the B&W TV demand declines the company will be able to switch all its capacity to manufacture glass for CPT. The Samtel group themselves would pick up 50% of the production for their needs. A large part would also be sold to domestic CPT manufacturers like JCT, LG-Hotline and BPL-Uptron. The domestic CPT industry is projected to grow by 23% and 27% per year in the next two years respectively. Total capacity is also expected to go up from 6.7 million tonnes in the year 2000 to 8.5 million tonnes and 10.5 million tonnes during 2001 and 2002 respectively. During 1999, CPT industry grew by 37% with a production of 5.46 million tonnes. Samcor Glass at present has an equity of Rs 80 crore contributed equally by the three partners. While the 4.7 billion Corning is a major player in the field of optical fibre and other high technology products, Samsung is a leading player in the electronics business. The Rs 1,000 crore Samtel group is the largest integrated manufacturer of CPT and related components in India.