Denmark's Danfoss to invest Rs 70-Rs 100 crore in TN plant

Chennai: Danish company Danfoss A/S has decided to expand its Indian plant near here with an investment of Rs 70-Rs 100 crore to manufacture low voltage drives, a top company official said.

He said that Danfoss, which has a turnover of 5.8 billion euros, has started supplying power module solutions for an Indian automotive manufacturer.

"India is an important market and we are expanding production here. We have landed a huge contract from an Indian automotive player for components for hybrid vehicles and supplies have begun. There are many applications that need hybrid solutions." Kim Fausing, President and CEO told IANS on Wednesday while declining to name the client company.

"We are becoming a solutions provider helping our customers to transition. Our components are used in autonomous tractors and other vehicles," Domenico Traverso, Danfoss India Board Chairman told IANS.

"We are expanding the production capacity of the drives. We will be investing about Rs 70-100 crore to make 120,000 units per annum of low voltage drives," Ravichandran Purushothaman, President, Danfoss India told IANS.

The low voltage drives will be used in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) machines.

Purushothaman added that the local content in Danfoss products in India is at 40 per cent now and will go up to 70 per cent in three years.

Danfoss business segments are classified under power solutions, cooling, drives and heating and it supplies components, systems for original equipment manufacturers.

According to Purushothaman, the commercial real estate market slowed down after the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 came into effect.

Similarly, as the Bureau of Energy Efficiency is working on new standards for chillers, players are going slow. Processing of vegetables, dairy products has gone up and more investments are taking place in the dairy sector, Purushothaman remarked.

"Chiller sector is one of our strongholds," Jurgen Fischer, President, Danfoss Cooling told IANS.

Queried about Danfoss acquisitions, Fausing said last year there were eight acquisitions including one in India and the Danish company is on the lookout for technology companies.

Last year, Danfoss acquired the Pune-based embedded software provider KPTronix.