Taiwan-based automotive oil seal maker NJK Oil Seal Corp is scouting for a joint venture partner to set up a manufacturing plant in India.

The company has decided to set up its own facility in the country to bring down its product prices and to meet rising demand for its products.

Talking to Autocar Professionalat ACMA Automechanika New Delhi, Alice Wang, manager, NJK Oil Seal Corp, said the tax regime in India remains a major roadblock for high-quality foreign component makers like NJK to sell their products here.

The company already has a good number of orders in hand from Tier 1 auto component makers in India. According to Wang, the company is supplying oil seals and rubber moulded parts to Tier 1 component suppliers and OEMs like Talbros, Continental Baxy, Piaggio and Eicher in India.

“The tax structure for auto components is very high. For our kind of products, the customer in India is charged with around 30 percent of import duty apart from 5-10 percent of overseas freight charges. If the tax structure is relaxed, NJK will be able to win more orders from India,” she said.

At present NBK has two manufacturing facilities – one in Taiwan and another in China. Currently the company has been restructuring its Taiwan facility as to introduce complete automation solutions in the plant while Chinese plant is running at full capacity. The company has an installed manufacturing capacity of around 700,000 oil seals at its China plant.

NJK has been supplying its products since the past eight years in India. Of its turnover of $1.4 million, 60 percent comes from China while a majority part of the remaining share comes from developed markets like the US and Germany. India is one of the potential markets for NJK and hence the company is looking to set up its production facility here, she concluded.