The company also announced substantial expansion of its operations in India where it will build five new automotive parts manufacturing units for a seven-fold increase there.
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano inaugurated this steel tube manufacturing plant in Casa Grande near Phoenix in the presence of Caparo chairman Lord Paul, CEO Angad Paul and British Counsul General Peter Hunt.
Built on a 15-acre plot, the Casa Grande plant is Caparo's seventh in the US and Canada and its capacity will be increased in stages. Besides its home base in Britain, Caparo has steel plants in Spain, North America and India.
Paul, who has already put up four auto ancillary manufacturing plants in India, announced that the group would add five more such units in the country.
These will be located in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Paul said the Caparo group hopes to increase its business in India seven fold to account for 35 per cent of the group's global turnover from less than five per cent at present.
"In the past, India had taken a stance to focus on information technology and service industry, but now it is realizing that it can be very competitive in manufactured goods. We are very upbeat about India because our (Caparo) expertise, be it in the US, UK or India, is in traditional manufacturing industry," he said.
Lord Paul said, "at the moment our Indian business is very small. Not even five per cent of our current $1.3 billion, but we are hoping and what we will very much like to do is that the India business becomes almost one-third of the group's turnover."
The Caparo group is also considering acquisition and its turnover in India is expected to rise to more than Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in 2008 from approximately Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion) at present.
Regarding expansion to other Asian countries, Lord Paul said, "we looked at other Asian countries and have repeatedly come to the conclusion that anything that we can do in India, we will give it a preference."
When asked why Caparo had not joined the China bandwagon, Lord Paul said "by the time we looked at China it was a bit late and by that time India started looking up."
