Karnataka

Indo-Spanish JV sets up PCB plant at Tumkur

Bangalore: The software industry is generally more in the news, but for a change something is happening in the realm of IT hardware. CIPSA-RIC India Pvt. Ltd., a company jointly promoted by Indian entrepreneurs Alok Garg and Anil Gupta, and Circuitos Impressos Professionales SA (CIPSA), a Spanish Printed Circuit Board (PCB) manufacturer, inaugurated their new facility at Tumkur on Thursday. The new plant, with an installed capacity of 500,000 sq.m. of double and multi-layered PCBs annually, is the largest in India, said Alok Garg, Managing Director, CIPSA-India. He announced that Tecnomec Srl, an Italian PCB manufacturer, had taken a 10 per cent stake in the company. The company also has a smaller facility at Doddaballapur.

Mr. Garg said companies based in China currently supply about “80-90 per cent of the Indian demand for PCBs”. Chinese companies are able to beat competition because of the low prices they offer. However, he said the gap between Indian and Chinese prices have “narrowed significantly” in the last year. He conceded that Indian capacities are “miniscule” when compared to the scales of operation in China. CIPSA’s Tumkur plant has a capacity of 0.5 million sq.m. of PCBs a year, compared to a standard Chinese plant with a capacity of 10 million sq.m. a year, he said. Mr. Garg said a unique feature of the plant is that it will recycle 95 per cent of water consumed during the manufacturing process.

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