Exide Industries Builds New Battery Plant

The chief minister of West Bengal, Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, recently laid the foundation stone of a new battery plant being built by Exide Industries Ltd. in Haldia, India. The plant will be established on a nine-acre plot adjacent to the company's existing plant. "This is going to be a completely new state-of-the-art plant with machinery imported from Italy and Germany," says S.B. Ganguly, executive chairman and CEO of Exide Industries Ltd. The company will initially invest Rs 60 crore and plans to increase the new plant's production to 1 million cells per year. The new export plant will target markets in the Asia Pacific region such as Australia, Korea, Japan and Singapore in addition to Western Europe.