US-based Gorilla Glass maker Corning will begin production of cover glasses for mobile phones by the second half of next year from its new manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu, said India managing director Sudhir Pillai.
The company will also begin making glass tubes and vials for storing vaccines from another new plant coming up in Hyderabad, which will also begin manufacturing next year, the top executive said in an exclusive interaction with Mint.
“The Tamil Nadu plant will have an initial capacity of 35 million pieces, which will cater to all the local players, plus our global vendors who are assembling in India,” Pillai said.
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The production will be carried out by Bharat Innovative Glass Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a joint venture (JV) formed early this year between Corning and Indian electronics manufacturing services provider Optiemus Infracom Ltd, at a total investment of ₹1,000 crore. The companies have broken ground at the site and construction will pick up pace in the coming months.
The $13 billion Fortune 500 company is also readying another plant in Hyderabad for producing glass vials used by the pharma industry. “India is becoming, slowly, the vaccine capital of the world, and there is a need for a lot of tubes, from which ampules and vials are made,” Pillai said. “We’ve brought Velocity to India already, which is a coating used in these tubes; now we will be making the tubes also.”
Corning and France’s SGD Pharma inked a JV in 2023 for this unit. The initial investment in the plant will be $60 million.
Read more | Optiemus Infracom to make screen protectors with Corning tech and branding
Corning is in discussion with companies in the semiconductor industry for providing glass for lasers, direction systems and packaging, Pillai said.
“We enable this industry in a big way and the largest manufacturers of lithography machines are large customers for us,” said Pillai. “So, we are excited about the semicon industry evolving in India. So, we are again looking for partnerships in India.”
The glass maker is also tracking the aerospace and defence industry, where investments in localization of manufacturing are taking place. Pillai said that segments like the aerospace defence and drone manufacturing industries require high-purity fused silica, which is one of the glasses it produces.
