Saint Gobain wants suppliers to slash rates
November 13th, 2008 - 7:16 pm ICT by IANS
- Chennai, Nov 13 (IANS) The Indian arm of leading French glass maker Saint-Gobain, which is developing a greenfield plant in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, Thursday said it will renegotiate rates with the project’s suppliers to achieve substantial cost savings. “Taking advantage of slowdown and the general fall in prices we will renegotiate rates with our vendors for the Rajasthan project. However, I will not be able to comment on the price reduction that would happen,” Saint-Gobain India managing director B. Santhanam told reporters here on the sidelines of a seminar.
The company would ask the the suppliers who benefit from the price fall of crude oil, steel and other commodities to slash prices. There is scope for 10 percent reduction in purchase costs, he said.
In June this year, the company announced the 300,000-tonne plant at Bhiwadi, to be set up at an investment of Rs.10-billion. The new unit will take the company’s capacity to 750,000 tonnes per annum, as its Rs.15-billion unit at Sriperumbudur near here has a capacity of 450,000.
Asked about the impact of the slowdown on the company’s operations, he said: “We have increased market share to 41 percent as the concept of green building is catching up. Further, there is good demand from the solar energy sector.”
However, there has been no volume growth for the industry between January and October this year, Santhanam added.
“Our exports of value added glass to the Middle East has increased,” he said, adding that supplies to car exporters like Hyundai Motor India Ltd also went up.
“We will be hit by the delay in the Tata Nano launch as we are the sole sheet glass vendor,” Santhanam added.
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- bhiwadi- - car exporters
- - french glass
- - glass maker
- - glass vendor
- - hyundai motor
- - hyundai motor india
- - india ltd
- - indian arm
- - santhanam
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November 17th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
EU Auto Glassmakers Shattered at $1.78b Antitrust Bill
By Martin Schwoerer
November 13, 2008 - 676 views
Note to CEOs: if you’re going to meet with your competitors at a clandestine hotel in order to fix prices, make sure nobody in your entourage is a snitch. And if you’ve already received a regulator’s multimillion-dollar fine a few years ago, be more careful the second time, otherwise you’re likely to be fined a cool billion bucks– as France’s Saint Gobain was yesterday. Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition: “Saint-Gobain, Asahi, Pilkington and Soliver have defrauded the auto industry and consumers for five years. The FT reports that the fines are so punitive because the auto glass industry is large (sales of $3bn/year) and because Saint-Gobain had been involved in a similar incident in the past.”
Strangely, car makers seem not so interested in getting any of their (overcharged) money back: One said, “In the current environment, we do not want to make life harder for our suppliers.” Huh? A strange thing for a car company to say, given how they (given a chance) squeeze suppliers till the pips squeak. But the (unnamed) car maker went on: “Not to forget, the quoted companies are the only ones left in the business.” Oh, that’s why.
In other supplier-related news, Automobilwoche [sub] reports that the global crisis is claiming its first major German casualty. Getrag, a privately-owned company, hasn’t recovered since Chrysler recently cancelled an per-year order of 700,000 DSG (dual-
clutch) transmissions, and is practically bankrupt. Expect to see worried faces at Getrag’s customers, which include BMW, Mercedes, Smart and Porsche.
Financial Times »
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saint gobain has a habit of principles of action and conduct to all the employees top to bottom.
This shows that it waS ALL eyewas.