Jenoptik forms joint venture in India

03 Jul 2008

Growing automotive industry drives Jenoptik's industrial metrology into India, and more of the company's divisions could follow suit.

The Jenoptik Group's industrial metrology division now has a presence on the ground in India thanks to a recent deal that established a joint venture in the city of Bangalore. The move paves the way for other divisions of Jenoptik to gain easy access to the Indian market.

"There was a strong business case for our industrial metrology division to be close to the automotive market in India and have direct contact with the clients," Katrin Lauterbach of Jenoptik told optics.org. "It could also be an option for our lasers and materials processing division. They are not there yet, but there is a potential opportunity for the future."

The new joint venture will be called HOMMEL-ETAMIC Metrology India Pvt. Ltd and will be focused primarily on the global automotive industry. It will begin operating as a sales company with five employees, and expand over time.

"The company will develop products for a wide range of measurement tasks such as testing roughness, contour and form as well as determining dimensions," said Lauterbach. "These measurements, some of which are optical, are for individual components in the engine and the drive technology such as the gear box."

Lauterbach added that Jenoptik's lasers and materials processing division is particularly strong in using lasers to treat car dashboards, so could use the new joint venture as a springboard into the Indian market.

The history behind this deal dates back to 2006 when Jenoptik subsidiary Hommelwerke acquired the Etamic Group of France, bringing together two giants in the industrial measurement market with complementary technologies. This created Jenoptik's industrial metrology division, which has around 560 employees and sales of €80 million in 2007. Today's joint venture sees Jenoptik join forces with Francis Klein, a distribution partner of Etamic and a well established name in India.

India is one of the world's fastest growing nations with a booming automotive industry. Numerous leading automobile manufacturers and suppliers have established production sites in the country in recent years. Thanks to the new joint venture, Jenoptik believes that it will be able to respond quickly to the growing needs of the market.

Author
Jacqueline Hewett is editor of Optics & Laser Europe magazine.