By Prasun Sonwalkar, IANS
London : A Belfast-based packaging firm has become the latest Northern Ireland firm to engage with India’s growing economy as the region is poised to become one of the foremost examples of an intensive trade and business relationship between India and the United Kingdom.
Northern Ireland has been better known in India for trouble and turbulence, but it is fast emerging as one of UK’s most prominent trading regions with Indian companies investing there and Northern Ireland companies winning major contracts in India.
Trade relations between Northern Ireland and India have become two-way. Sounds of blasts and gunfire have given way to the tenor of currency with Indian firms such as HCL Technologies and Firstsource setting up offices and BPO centres in recent years.
Inpac Delta Group, the Belfast-based business jointly owned by Delta Print and Packaging and China’s Inpac packaging group, has now secured a six million pounds (about $12 million) contract in India with an international mobile telephone manufacturer.
The deal, which was signed during a recent Invest Northern Ireland trade mission to India, will see the unnamed telecom company’s packaging produced at Inpac Delta’s plant near Chennai, where the company currently has two manufacturing operations and a third in the pipeline. Invest Northern Ireland (Invest NI) is a regional economic development agency.
Inpac Delta has also formed a partnership in India with Mumbai-based Claridge Moulded Fibres.
Announcing the contract in Belfast, Delta Print and Packaging chairman Terry Cross said it would give the joint venture a strong presence in a market which is poised to become one of the world’s biggest.
He said: “Virtually all the main mobile equipment companies are now manufacturing there (in India) and are projecting huge growth in a strong marketplace of one billion people.
“As we already work with most of these global companies in China we took a decision to offer our expertise and experience to support them in India. This means forming relationship with international companies wherever their markets are.”
A prominent Indian-origin industrialist in the region, Lord Diljit Rana, who is also India’s Honorary Consul in Northern Ireland, has facilitated the growing trade and business relations between the two countries.
In September, the Omagh-based Telestack International signed a contract to supply its unique telescopic conveying equipment to an iron ore mining operation in Goa. The contract, with Fomento Industrial PVT, was worth 300,000 pounds for a tracked conveyor system.
Telestack will supply machinery for stockpiling and then loading ore onto vessels for transportation to steel plants, particularly in Japan.
The contract was announced by Philip Waddell, Telestack’s international sales manager, who said: “India has been a strategic target market for us and the trade mission was a great vehicle to develop distribution networks and contacts. It has a developing mining industry, which offers substantial scope for our range of machinery.
“The Invest NI trade mission enabled us to visit Goa and other mining centres such as Orissa. We were helped by Invest NI’s Asia Trade Team to identify a potential partner in India and then the trade mission in March introduced us to key contacts and set up meetings with them.
“We subsequently followed up a number of contacts and were invited by Fomento to help them deal with stockpiling and barge-loading issues,” Waddell added.
Alan Hingston, Invest NI’s Director of Trade, said: “This is an extremely important contract for Telestack International which, I am confident, will lead to further success in India.
“We’ve been working closely for some time with our quarrying, screening and mining machinery companies to help them to exploit the huge opportunities from India’s vast reserves of coal, iron ore, bauxite, manganese, limestone and other minerals. As a result of this focus, many companies have already secured significant business from mining operations and also from projects to improve India’s infrastructure.
“Furthermore, India is fast becoming a key market for Northern Ireland companies across a range of sectors including IT, biotechnology and consumer products. Initiatives which we are planning will provide additional support to companies to seize the massive business opportunities in what is now one of the world’s most dynamic markets.”