Rajkot-based Galaxy Bearings plans to set up a greenfield facility in the Asean region and has already identified a country for this project. Chief executive officer, Nitin Santoki told this writer that the new plant would produce several varieties of bearings with the annual installed capacity being ten million units. “Our target is to use over 80 percent of products made. These will be supplied to OEMs in this region. We also plan to support our Indian operations due to cost-competitiveness,” he said.

This will be Galaxy’s first plant overseas and it has tentatively earmarked Rs 50 crore as the investment over three years. Training will also begin soon so that manpower is equipped to handle production at the time of kicking off production. Back home, Galaxy is increasing capacity of its Rajkot plant. Three years ago, it had doubled installed capacity to two million bearings and is now adding a million more at a cost of Rs 18 crore.

This will involve creation of state-of-the-art manufacturing lines. Once this exercise is complete, about 80 percent of the new capacity will be taken up by taper bearings with cylindrical bearings taking up the rest. More than 90 percent of the new line will be automated to ensure good quality. Santoki added, with the completion of this project, Galaxy will be one of the few plants in this part of the world to have fully automated lines.

Automation will extend right from hardening the rings of the bearing to the oiling of the fully finished bearing (which will then slide through a rail for packaging, the only manual process). Plans are now on to automate packaging too. The company makes over 400 sizes in nine families of bearings.

Galaxy also has another facility in Pune that makes 1.25 lakh green bearing rings every month for a customer in the US. It has also been supplying about 30,000 machined rings to bearing majors in India. The company now plans to treble capacity at Pune in two years and has bought land in Sanaswadi.“In Rajkot, we work with our vendors to get them into global markets. More incomes will encourage them to improve quality and help us eventually in eliminating rejections,” Santoki said.

Last year, Galaxy reached a turnover of Rs 25 crore with 50 percent coming from exports. This year, it has targeted Rs 32 crore. The commissioning of the new plant along with expansion plans locally could help cross turnover of Rs 250 crore in five years, he said.