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According to the NEI Deputy General Manager, Mr Sanjeev Taparia, NTN has shown interest in making India as its production hub in the region and export the bearings from the Indian facility.

HYDERABAD, Dec. 13

NTN Bearing, the $2.3-billion Japanese company is planning to relocate three of its manufacturing facilities to China from Japan to take advantage of the low cost labour bring down the cost of production and enhance margins. The Japanese giant was also looking at India as its production base for the region.

Announcing this here on Friday, the Managing Director of NTN Bearing Singapore, Mr Yoshihiro Inami, told newspersons that the move was part of the corporation's new strategic initiatives.

These initiatives include strengthening business development capacity, developing high profit nature by improving cost competitiveness, reorganising of production to improve competitiveness and speeding up research and development, Mr Inami said. NTN, which currently commands over 16 per cent share of Rs 2,000-crore Indian bearing market along with National Engineering Industries Ltd (NEI) belonging to the Rs 4,000-crore C.K. Birla group, also commands 12 per cent share of the exclusively imported bearing market which was estimated at Rs 500 crore.

Stating that NTN was among the fastest growing bearing brands in India in terms of absolute market volume, Mr Inami said the corporation expects to attain the industry leader status in India by 2005.

Terming Indian bearing market as a difficult one, Mr Inami attributed it to low quality perception, equally low price support, rampant duplication, and availability of cheap and spurious alternatives. "But for us at NTN and NEI, this market scenario has given us more opportunities for growth than threats," he said.

According to the NEI Deputy General Manager, Mr Sanjeev Taparia, NTN has shown interest in making India as its production hub in the region and export the bearings from the Indian facility. However, according to Mr Taparia, this new facility would be set up at NEI's Jaipur unit to cater to the needs of NTN. Stating that small quantities of speciality bearings were currently being manufactured and exported for NTN, Mr Taparia said dedicated production facility would be set up by NEI once the test marketing process was completed.

According to him, NTN has also shown interest in investing in the new venture to be set up by NEI, details of which would be worked out at a later stage.

NEI is currently engaged in the production of ball bearings, taper roller bearings and cartridge taper bearings under its own brand - NBC - in technical collaboration with NTN. It also markets the complete range of NTN bearings outside the range of NBC, Mr Taparia said.

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