With its capacity to manufacture 3.6 million safety switches annually, the India plant will also become a hub for exports to UAE and other countries.

Schmersal Group, the seven-decade-old Germany-based specialist in safety for man/machine interface, automation and lift switchgear announced that their first plant in India at Ranjangaon MIDC in Pune district has become fully operational. Built at an investment of Rs 65 crore, this greenfield facility is spread over five acres and has the capacity to manufacture 3.6 million safety switches annually. "Safety position switches, safety door switches, pull cord safety switches for conveyors and safety switches for elevators will currently be manufactured from this facility to meet the demands of the growing Indian market. The company also plans to start exporting to its parent company from the first quarter of 2015 and then to ASEAN and Gulf countries," said Heinz Schmersal, President, Schmersal Group, at a media interaction on December 16, 2014.

Schmersal has now seven manufacturing sites globally of which four are located in Germany and one each in Brazil, China and India. Speaking on the occasion, Sagar Bhosale, Managing Director, Schmersal India, said, "India is strategically a very important and emerging market for our products. The Indian industry is focusing more on making the workplace safer for its employees and in order to achieve this they need complete technical solutions, which should reach customers through faster deliveries and services. The rationale behind setting up this facility in India is to provide safety solutions to Indian customers more quickly and locally"

"Safety standards and norms in Indian industry will become more stringent and will be comparable to global standards. As a pioneer and first-to-start manufacturing of machine safety products in India, we foresee a huge opportunity for Schmersal India contributing in a big way to ensure much lesser accidents in the industry and therefore play a lead role in the market. We are ambitious and plan to have 30-40 per cent growth YOY without losing focus on other business objectives. Being a 5-star MIDC, the necessary infrastructure was already present at Ranjangaon and proximity to the airport and availability of skilled manpower made Ranjangaon an easy choice," Bhosale added.

The company has also started a campaign, 'Machine Safety - Make in India' to increase awareness about safety at workplace, educate people about standards of machine safety, create a facility to make safety products locally in India, and provide a facility where people can visit and test the various safety solutions. "It has been our observation that many Indian companies do not follow safe practices even though there are many guidelines laid down by the Directorate of Industrial Safety. This leads to injuries, loss of limbs and even fatalities. Surprisingly, the accidents are not limited to unskilled labour but even include very experienced workers who tend to become over-confident and bypass certain procedures. We therefore started providing our products and solutions to Indian manufacturers from 2007 prior to which we had only a local distributor," Bhosale said. Bharat Forge, Ferromatic Milakron, Johnson Lifts, L & T, LMW Group, OTIS, Schindler, Tata Steel, Thyssen, Trutzschler, Unilever and WindWorld are some of the prominent customers of Schmersal in India.

Apart from providing their products, Schmersal India also conducts training workshops for implementation of safety measures. "We conduct two workshops each in north, west and south India each year where the basics of safety are explained to the workers. We also help install our products and carry out risk assessment for companies," Bhosale said. Also on the anvil is a full-fledged R&D centre at Pune, which will be ready in the first quarter of 2015. It will have on board engineers who will coordinate with their counterparts in Germany. "Out of the thousands of variants of the many series of our safety products, we have started to make about 400 variants and hope to gradually make available the entire portfolio in India. The initial series comprises electro-mechanical switches but we will soon introduce our electronic and other switches too. To do so, we need to first establish a good chain of vendors who will supply us the materials and components of the same international quality as used at our parent plant," said Schmersal.

Founded in 1945, Schmersal Group is headquartered in Wuppertal and in the demanding field of machine safety the company is among international market and competence leaders. Based on more than 25,000 different switching devices, the corporate group offers system solutions for the safety of man and machine. The company employs 1,800 people globally and its turnover is approximately Euro 200 million. Schmersal India's turnover was Euro 2.5 million last year and it hopes to touch Euro 12 million by 2018.