Ahmedabad:

Highly Electrical Appliances India Pvt Ltd, the leading joint Air Conditioner compressor maker venture of Hitachi of Japan and Highly of China, today announced to expand the production capacity of its sole Indian plant in Gujarat from current 2 million units per annum to 3 million units per annum by next financial year id 2019-20.

Addressing a press conference here Chairman of the company Li Haibin today said that the plant at Changodar near Ahmedabad was started five years ago with the initial capacity of 1 million units and was expanded to 2 million by FY 2016-17 and looking at the growth of the Indian AC market, it has been decided to expand it further to 3 million by 2019-20.

He said that various modalities regarding the expansion were being finalized.

He also said that India was one of the most important markets for his company which has four other plants in China. ‘The projections show that the AC market in India would reach 8 million units per annum from current around 5 million by 2021. If we don’t expand our sole plant here we would lag behind. We also have plans to raise our capacity here to 4 million by 2021,’ he said.

He also said that the Indian market is slower than China where in just one year last year 80 million ACs were sold. But in the coming years the Indian market was also bound to become big due to the changing life-style and better power availability.

MD of the company Yin Shah on the occasion said that the Indian government should give more incentives and do tax reforms for the AC sector. ‘In China the government has given many incentives which has given a steep rise to the sales,’ he said.

Director and Vice President Sameer Bhargava on the occasion said that the government must take steps to correct the tax related issues. ‘If we buy components for making compressors we need to pay more tax than that paid on the import of finished product,’ he said.

He also informed that the demand for inverted compressors fitted ACs was rising with a greater speed than earlier thought of. ‘It has taken around 45% share of the AC market so far. Now as per the new regulations the earlier 5 star ACs would be deemed 3 star only. So the earlier compressors have reached their optimum point of sorts and it has increased the demand of inverter compressors. We also need to educate people about energy conservation while using ACs by telling them what is the proper temperature setting for that,’ he added saying that in Indian climates it should be from 23 to 24 degrees as every degree increase in temperature setting saves 6 % on power expenses.

DeshGujarat