Kodak TV invest ₹500 crore to set up manufacturing plant in UP

Kodak TV India on Tuesday (August 4) said it will invest over ₹500 crore in the next three years to set up a fully-automated television manufacturing plant in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh.

Super Plastronics Pvt Ltd (SPPL), the brand licensee in India for Kodak TV, said the first phase of the plant would be operational by the end of 2021. This would help the company increase the local value addition and disrupt the affordable smart TV market in India, it added.

The manufacturing plant will be used to develop and test Android TV products within India and reduce dependency on imports from other countries, SPPL said in a statement.

The company said it will make an investment of more than ₹500 crore over the next three years in a fully automated TV manufacturing plant in Hapur, UP to provide a “thrust to its Make in India commitment and leverage its Android certification”.

“With this investment, we are planning to increase our manufacturing capacity to one million units in the new unit. All our future projects will be developed and tested in India in partnership with Google. With this new plant, we will generate more than 2,000 jobs,” SSPL founder and CEO Avneet Singh Marwah said.

With this plant, the local value addition in TV manufacturing will go up to 50-60 per cent, he added.

“Currently, the Indian TV industry imports most of the raw materials and has a value addition of only 10-12 per cent. However, with this investment and partnership with Google… Kodak TV aims to increase value addition to 50-60 per cent,” said Marwah.

The new plant and R&D center will help manufacture technology-driven products and introduce more manufacturing lines aligned to Make in India, he added.

“The certified Android TV manufacturing plant with complete backward integration and R&D center will be operational by 2021.

“With a capacity to produce a million TV sets annually, the new facility will be equipped with two fully automated, AI-enabled manufacturing lines to facilitate near-contact less production,” the company said.

SPPL is also a brand licensee for French electronics brand Thomson. Earlier in June, the company had said it will invest ₹1,000 crore over the next five years to expand its manufacturing capacity and strengthen its presence in the consumer electronics and appliances segment.

SPPL currently has three manufacturing plants, located in Noida, Una in Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu.