By IANS
New Delhi : ArcelorMittal has joined hands with two other metal industry giants to open a metal cladding company. The joint venture is coming-up with an automobile spare unit spread over 225,000 square metres at Indore in Madhya Pradesh.
ArcelorMittal Stainless and Nickel Alloys, Auerhammer (Dnick Holdings Company) and Shivalik Bimetal Controls have formed a new venture called Innovative Clad Solutions, S.S. Sandhu, chairman of the Shivalik Bimetal Controls Ltd told reporters here Thursday.
The new venture would position India as the hub of spare part manufacturing industry. Presently the automobile spare part market is valued at Rs.20 billion ($500 million) in India.
Sandhu said the initial investment for the project would be Rs.500 million ($12 million) and more funds for expansion would be used later.
CEO of the ArcelorMittal, M. Chaboud said this was just the beginning of a new era of metallurgy in India. “We are going to provide innovative application solutions based on our state of the art R&D solutions,” he said.
Bijendra Jha, the CEO of the joint venture, who also holds various clad metal patents to his name told IANS later that more and more new ventures are likely to come-up in near future.
“India is a cheaper market. The skills are easily available here. This would be a driving force for the spare part industry worldwide to make India as a spare part manufacturing hub,” said Jha.