Senior UK Minister visits Renishaw during India-UK TECH Summit

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2016-11-16 12:13:00

Renishaw, the global engineering technologies company, hosted a visit to its Pune, India facility by Rt Hon Liam Fox MP, British Secretary of State for International Trade. During his visit he toured the 80,000 sq ft building where he saw a state-of-the-art metal 3D printing facility, a manufacturing unit that services the Renishaw Group, and a large R&D software facility. The Secretary of State was also presented with a unique metal gift produced on a Renishaw additive manufacturing (3D printing) system and planted a commemorative tree.

The visit coincided with the India-UK TECH Summit, held in New Delhi which marked a celebration of India and UK’s partnership across business, technology, science, innovation, education and design.

Hosting the visit was Mr. Rhydian Pountney, Renishaw’s Director and General Manager – UK/ROW Sales Division, who is responsible for the company’s sales and marketing activities in India. He is also co-chair of the Advanced Engineering Working Group of the annual India-UK Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) which met in New Delhi as part of the Summit.

Mr Pountney co-chaired ‘The Future of Manufacturing’ workshop with Dr Gopichand Katragadda, the Group Chief Technology Officer at Tata Sons. The workshop brought together a wide cross-section of industry, academia and R&D institutions with an interest in Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing collaboration between the UK and India.

“Renishaw has been operating in India for over 30 years and I was able to show the Secretary of State how our long-term commitment to India has been beneficial to both Renishaw and the Indian economy,” said Mr Pountney. “Today we employ 350 skilled people in India, the majority based at our Pune site in Maharashtra, who directly contribute to the R&D and manufacture of our world leading innovative precision measurement, 3D printing and healthcare products.”

Mr. Kumar Iyer, British Deputy High Commissioner, Mumbai said, “The Secretary of State and the UK delegation’s visit to Pune could not have been at a better time giving a further boost to Maharashtra-UK collaborations with workshops with Indian companies and Government officials across the Advanced Engineering, Manufacturing and Smart Cities initiatives. As well as the UK’s partnership with Pune as a Smart City, British companies like Perkins and Renishaw have opened new manufacturing facilities in Maharashtra with more being considered. The relationship has never looked stronger.’’

Renishaw has offices in five Indian cities, plus resident sales engineers in other key areas. It purchased the Pune site in 2005 and has since made significant additional investments, including a large extension to the facility in 2011 which almost trebled available space. In June 2016 it also opened an Additive Manufacturing Solutions Centre which aims to increase the adoption of metal 3D printing technologies by Indian manufacturers.

The Pune facility also houses customer demonstration and training facilities, a procurement operation to directly source high-quality components from Indian vendors, a large software development team, and a 100% Export Orientated Unit (EOU) which manufactures certain products that were previously procured and where assembly costs are critical to competitiveness.

• Follow @CNCTimes