Germany’s Frimo eyes India facility

The Frimo Group of Germany is keen on entering the Indian automotive market. The 200 million euro company intends to supply sophisticated machines for manufacture of plastics in car interiors. It plans to set up an office in India this year and a facility by 2008. Head of sales department, Frimo Freilassing GmbH, Arun Singh said that his company was exploring the option of a joint venture. A final decision will be taken in due course.

The Frimo group has competence in cockpit, interior trims and insulation/acoustics. It offers a wide range of technologies. “Frimo technology is used nearly for all automakers and system suppliers worldwide. We deliver machinery for tools making interior parts,” he said. Traditionally, business for Frimo came from OEMs but it is now being outsourced to Tier I and 2 players.

“While our OEM customers include BMW, Porsche, DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen, Visteon, Delphi, Faurecia, Lear Corporation and International Automotive Components are some of our bigger supplier names,” Singh said. Frimo also has a small manufacturing outlet in China. Its machines cost anywhere upwards of 5,000 euros while the bigger ones can go up to 20,000 euros or even one million.