Japan?s electronic major Panasonic plans to kickstart production from its newly established manufacturing facility at Jhajjar in Haryana by May this year.
The company had originally set a target of rolling out production from this facility by 2012 but it seems that the facility will be launched by April-May this year only. The new plant, to come up over 70 acres, will be mainly for manufacturing home appliances (refrigerator, AC, welding machines, washing machine etc) and with its commissioning Panasonic India will also nearly double its workforce to 20,000 by 2012. Panasonic is investing US $ 300 million (around Rs 1,000 crore) in India to set up an R&D and manufacturing facility (as Panasonic Technopark) and on marketing initiatives.
Panasonic in India registered a turnover of around Rs 3,200 crore in FY 2010 and is on track to generate sales revenue of Rs 9,000 crore by 2012 in India. The company at present has an assembling unit for television in Noida.
Besides this Panasonic has undertaken a nationwide environment sensitisation programme ? Ecos?kool. Under the programme the company plans to create awareness amongst the children about global warming over 100 schools in seven cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai and Kolkata.
Manish Sharma, director marketing, Panasonic India told FE, ?So far we have covered 66 schools under the initiative programme. The activity began in September last year and the first phase will be over by April this year. The plan for the second phase is being readied under which cities like Patna, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Cochin etc will be covered. Ecos?kool aims at encouraging and engaging young minds to contribute towards a greener tomorrow.?
To tackle the problem of e-waste Panasonic has initiated organised recycling in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad and is encouraging its consumers to adopt the same. ?At present we have started with the internal recycling of products. These products are in the end in their lifecycle and are not usable at all. These products have been lying in our godown and cannot be used so sent for recycling. We shall soon start take back programme for the customers to bring their used products for recycling. The modalities of this are yet to be worked out,? said Sharma. As per data available till date 700 kilos of material has been recycled as a part of the internal recycling process. This includes phones, fax, machines, televisions, Acs, fans compressors etc.
