R&M establishes new production hub in India
Swiss cabling specialist R&M (Reichle & De-Massari AG) has opened its new manufacturing facility for optical fibre and copper assemblies at Jakkur in Bangalore.
The new 110 thousand sq.ft. facility is situated on four acres of land with sufficient room for further expansion. The facility is dedicated to production and warehousing, and will soon act as a primary supplier of Fiber Optic solutions for data centers and ‘Fiber to the X’ (FTTx) customers globally. According to the company it has invested ‘several million Swiss Francs’ in establishing this facility.
The company now has 370 employees in India with over 200 of them involved in production activities. The R&D and QC team in India are also supporting the company’s operations in other parts of the globe.
“R&M generated sales of CHF 232 million globally in 2017. Around 7 percent of the company’s sales is from India,” said Michel Riva, CEO, R&M AG.
“This factory is going to be biggest across entire R&M network. It will serve the entire APAC region,” said Markus Stieger, COO, Member of the board of directors, R&M AG. He joined the company in December 2006 and has seen it tripling in size over the last 12 years.
“The facility will bring advanced manufacturing capabilities in delivering a diverse product portfolio to our customers in India and across the Asian region. Further, it will help us to strengthen our position in structured cabling market,” said Laurent Amestoy, Executive Vice President SR APAC, MO-Singapore. “This will become largest plant worldwide by next year in terms of production hours. We will be doubling local employment by next year,” he added.
R&M, which began its operations in India in 2006, offers cabling solutions for Cat. 5e, Cat.6 and Cat.6A systems. For fibre-optic cabling, it offers a complete range of cables and components for single-mode (OS1, OS2) and multi-mode (OM3, OM4) fibre optic systems. It also has solutions for Twisted Pair Cabling, Automatic Infrastructure Management, V3 Distribution systems and 19" racks.
“We expect to begin copper patch-cord assembly by Q4 this year,” said Laurent Amestoy. The company uses insulation displacement technology for the production of patch cords.
In 2014, the company had acquired Bangalore-based fiber-optic products maker Advanced Fiber Systems (AFS).
“We started with a Rs 8 crore business in telecom four years back with 30 employees. Now the business exceeds Rs 100 crore with over 300 employees,” said Gaurav Ahluwalia, Managing Director at R&M India. The company has two divisions in India : public and private, with private comprising enterprise sales and public encompassing telecom sales.
The company has around 300 partners in India. Under its Qualified partner program, R&M conducts two training sessions per month pan-India for system integrators.
R&M’s customers in India include the likes of Tech Mahindra, BSNL, Sterlite Tech, Reliance Jio, several airports and mass transit operators.
“For R&M solutions, the enterprise market size is around Rs 1000 crores while the telecom market size is Rs 10000 crores,” said Shajan George, Technical Director, R&M India Private Limited.
“Opening the production facility in India means that 2018 will be characterized by huge expansion in production capacities, where over 400 highly qualified employees will be producing Fiber Optic solutions in accordance with high R&M quality standards. With the Bangalore site up and running, R&M India is looking forward to stepping up production in the coming days,” said Gaurav Ahluwalia.
In the coming months, R&M will focus on gradually expanding and becoming a cornerstone of the worldwide R&M production network. The intention is to increase the number of high-quality FO assemblies produced in India at optimal cost-efficiency levels to satisfy worldwide demand, and manufacture assemblies for other production plants.
“There are currently around 250 Swiss companies in India that have created 100 thousand jobs. Switzerland is 11th largest investor in India. Of these 250 Swiss companies in India, 40 companies are in South India with 30 of them in Bangalore,” said Sebastien Hug, Consul General, Consulate General of Switzerland, Bangalore. There are currently two ongoing negotiations between India and Switzerland : a Free Trade Agreement(FTA) between India and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and a Swiss-India Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) or investment protection agreement. Ignazio Cassis, Swiss Foreign Minister (head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs) had visited India just last week to carry forward these negotiations and to celebrate 70 years of the Swiss Indian friendship treaty, which was signed in August 1948.
