Do you pay attention to the electrical and electronics news and affairs, what happened everyday in the areas? Recently there are two events happened in the field. Let’s take view of them.
The first is from India: In a bid to reinforce its leading position in the field of Energy Efficiency, Schneider Electric today announced the acquisition of Meher Capacitors of the Meher group, a leader in the Indian Power Factor Correction (PFC) market.
MEHER has pioneered and nurtured the design and manufacture of Self Healing Power Factor Correction (PFC) Capacitors & Systems in India since the early eighties and currently possesses state of art technologies as well as comprehensive products & solutions for PFC, Harmonic Filtering & Network analysis. In addition it has in active development technology platforms which are essential for the evolution of future generation PFC Capacitors.
Speaking at a press conference here, Schneider Electric Country President Oliver Blum said with the buy out the company added another significant facet to its leadership position in energy efficiency in India.
Without revealing the future investments in India, he said the French electric major was looking to grow four-fold in India in the next five years and the take over would help it to grow five-fold in four years in the PFC business.
”It was a logical step to acquire Meher PFC as now we can offer a unique and comprehensive portfolio in the field of energy efficiency encompassing measurement, power quality correction, automation and monitoring,” he said.
Refusing to reveal the size of the deal, Mr Blum merely stated that Meher PFC had a turnover of Rs 40 crore in FY 09.
Mustafa Wajid, CEO, MEHER Group, said: ‘The transaction with Schneider Electric is yet another recognition of MEHER’s multi-faceted strengths & capabilities, and of the position it held in the business of Power Factor Correction. The combination of MEHER’s technology, its team and Schneider Electric’s strong international presence creates a powerful force which will accelerate movement towards global leadership in the Power Factor Correction domain. We at MEHER see this development as an important milestone in our growth journey.’
Schneider Electric offers integrated solutions across multiple market segments, including leadership positions in energy and infrastructure, industrial processes, building automation, and data centres/networks, as well as a broad presence in residential applications in more than 100 countries.
The second comes from Panasonic: Panasonic is moving production of speakers and capacitors to other plants, cutting about 90 jobs at its Forks of the River location.
Panasonic currently produces assembled speakers, capacitors, and foil for capacitors at Forks of the River.
The speaker production is moving to Reynosa, Mexico. The capacitor production is moving to a plant in Malaysia.
Assistant General Manager of General Affairs Clark Brandon said the speaker plant move is a consolidation into one production facility. Brandon said the capacitor plant move is due to the bulk of the company’s customer base being in southeast Asia.
The design and program management teams are set to stay in Knoxville.
The Forks of the River facility will lose about 90 of its 170 current employees. In 2002, there were 725 Panasonic employees at Forks of the River.
The company will use Department of Labor funds to help with job training and placement for displaced workers.
Move north to the River and prices range from $ 300,000 to over a million dollars. India was great and we were comfortable where we were, and really, did not want to move anywhere else. This can be accomplished by crating them, closing them into Schneider Electric or by arranging for its 170 current employees to watch them at capacitors.