A global leader in fastenings and assembly systems, French company ARaymond has invested Rs 45 crore to set up its fully owned first plant in India at Chakan near Pune. It has also established two technical sales offices in Gurgaon and Chennai. The plant was inaugurated by ARaymond Network CEO, Antoine Raymond. "This plant is our commitment to our customers, colleagues and suppliers for our long-term belief in this market. The company's presence here is of utmost importance not only for our collaboration and synergies with our subsidiaries in other countries, but also to go with our customers, and develop value with and for them," Raymond said.

Since inception, ARaymond designs, develops and manufactures products of mass appeal. Starting with creating fasteners for the military during World War II, the company caters to diverse markets like automotive, industrial, energies, agriculture and life. With a presence in four continents, it has 11 design offices, 22 manufacturing sites, two R&D centres, 37 companies and 1,300 active patents. The current capacity of the Pune plant is eight injection moulding machines. The plant overall can hold up to 29 moulding machines. The new plant will manufactures various plastic fasteners like rib locks, trim clips, cable straps and tape on clips, pipe/cable clips for interior and exterior panels, and quick connectors for fuel lines.

"The company's India focus lies in automotive and white goods sector and we will work with Maruti Suzuki, TATA Motors, and Mahindra & Mahindra in the automotive sector as also LG and Whirlpool in the white goods' segment. With the help of investments in India we will be able to raise our local content from 35 to 50 per cent by 2015. Apart from being a leader in the automotive market in line with our global strategy, we will also align our efforts in industrial and solar markets where we see a lot of opportunity to help on assembly technology. We expect to grow 25 to 30 per cent over the next three years and plan to cross the Rs 100-crore mark by 2015," said Manish Padharia, Managing Director, ARaymond Fasteners India (P) Ltd.