Tripling Production Lines at Factory in Chakan
Harman International Industries, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, held a ceremony on June 3 (local time) to celebrate the expansion of an auto parts manufacturing facility at its factory in Chakan of India with the attendance of local government officials.
Founded in 2014, the plant produces a variety of solutions for connected cars including automotive infotainment devices. Harman will invest about 60 billion won to expand the plant’s production lines from the current two to six by 2021.
Harman plans to increase the production volume of digital convenience units (DCUs) and telematics control units (TCUs), which were jointly developed with Samsung Electronics, 12-fold from the current 20,000 units a year in three years. The company is also planning to double the number of employees that currently stands at about 800 during the period.
"This expansion will enable us to offer customized electronic car parts solutions to global automakers including Suzuki, Daimler, Volkswagen, Tata and Fiat Chrysler," the company said.
Samsung Electronics has been aggressively expanding its Indian business. Samsung Display signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to build a mobile phone display manufacturing plant by April next year. It will soon fix the scale of its investment. Samsung SDI is also brooding over the size of its investment to build a smartphone battery manufacturing plant.
Samsung Electronics currently has production facilities in Chennai and Noida, India. It also has a research and development (R&D) center for mobile technology in Bengaluru and a design center in Noida.
Industry experts expect that Samsung will expand cooperation with local companies in various fields including smartphones and automobiles. In particular, car makers in India such as Mahindra favor parts for electric and autonomous vehicles such as batteries made by Korean companies, so Samsung Electronics is expected to make additional investments to expand production in India.