Lava Dials up Investments with Capacity Expansion in South and North India

Mobile handset vendor Lava International Ltd. said this week that it is deepening its investments in India. To this end, Lava will undertake manufacturing capacity expansion in the country; the capacity addition will enable the company to manufacture as many as 18 million mobile handsets a month. The new capacity additions are expected to come into effect in a phased manner over the next six years, said recent media reports in India. By 2021, Lava’s fresh investments will amount to US$338 mn (as per exchange rates on October 26, 2015).

With many of its rivals already focusing on the future, Lava hopes that its new facilities in Tirupati and Noida will help it compete head-to-head in an increasingly dynamic mobile handset manufacturing market in India.

Sanjeev Agarwal, Lava’s chief manufacturing officer, said that the company aims to have its two plants in Tirupati and Noida operational by the end of 2017. However, the better part of Lava’s investments will be channeled into its Noida manufacturing facility. The sprawling manufacturing plant, spread over an area of 100 acres, will be located on the crucial Noida expressway. The facility will not merely manufacture handsets, but will also house a hardware R&D plant with a sizeable investment of INR 500 crore. Lava’s current hardware R&D facility is located in Shenzhen, China, whereas its software research team sits out of Bengaluru, India.

About INR 500 crore is being pumped into Lava’s Tirupati manufacturing plant, which could potentially cater to demand stemming from the Southern states in India. The manufacturing plant in Tirupati will be crucial in that it will also house units for other cellphone vendors such as Karbonn, Micromax, and Celkon. An appreciable 6,400 jobs are expected to be generated once both the planned facilities are operational.

Besides achieving economies of scale, Lava also hopes that its new investments will receive backing from respective governments and earn subsidies and VAT benefits.

New Dip-Coating Technique Helps Create Fiber-Like Polymer LEDs

A team of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Research and Technology’s School of Electrical Engineering have developed a variety of light emitting diodes (LEDs) with fiber-like properties that extend the scope of applications of wearable displays. The findings of this latest research study were published in the Advanced Electronic Materials journal. According to Kwon Seon-Il, the lead author of the study, the commercialization of this technology could make the production of wearable displays as easy as that of clothes. 

The conventional method of manufacturing wearable displays entailed the manufacture of hard substrates that were then attached to textile surfaces. The key drawback of this technique was that the rigidity of wearable displays made their use in several applications unfeasible. 

The team of scientists that developed the fiber-like LEDs decided to leave behind the traditional approach of creating LED displays on a rigid, plane surface. In place of the conventional approach, the scientists focused on creating wearable LED displays with fiber-like attributes. 

This technology is known as the dip-coating process, named thus because it entails bathing a 3D rod in a superyellow solution. The fiber rod is used as a replacement to conventional fabric fiber. In order to build the textile, regular organic materials are deposited as layers on the fiber’s thread. 

The advantage of the dip coating process is that it enables organic materials to be deposited in layers on the fibers with a cylindrical, 3D structure. It was hitherto difficult to achieve this using the heat-coating process. The dip-coating process also lends better flexibility with regard to the thickness of the coating.

The new process can help mass production of fiber-based wearable LED displays, which can be used in a myriad of industrial and commercial applications. For instance, with the use of roll-to-roll technology processing technology, electronic devices can be created on a roll of metal foil or even flexible plastic. From the standpoint of costs, this technology is not prohibitively expensive.

Factory Profits in China Sag to Two-Year Low, Show Figures From China’s National Bureau of Statistics

After recent reports about China’s economic growth slipping to the lowest in 24 years, reports about factory profits in China reaching a two-year low are now emerging. Leading news agency Reuters stated in a report on Tuesday that the 2014 factory profits reported by Chinese manufacturing facilities are showing growth rates that are the weakest in two years. With these new reports, the challenges faced by the Chinese economy are only underscored. China’s National Bureau of Statistics states that between 2013 and 2014, large industrial facilities in China registered a 3.3% increase in profits. This is the slowest since 2012 (November). The Bureau also stated that the country’s factory profits contracted by about 8%, which is the worst performance in about 12 months.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines, a vice minister from the country’s Ministry of Industry and IT said that it would be a while before China overcame this slowdown. He said that China’s economy is entering a phase of ‘new normal’ where downward pressures on the industrial sector are more evident and impactful than ever before. Weak innovation capabilities are also hampering growth to a great extent, the minister added. The government of China has now revised its goal of growth in the industrial sector from 8.3% in 2014 to 8% in 2015.

As China’s economy fast approaches maturity, the definition of what is ‘normal’ from the economic context is now undergoing a sea change. Officials said that the government is now focused on facing this transition with growth rates that are slower, but offer better quality. 

Financial institutions and banks are feeling the heat of the slowdown, as the ration of bad debts of Chinese banks scaling a five-year peak, according to the national bank regulator. The manufacturing market in China has been sagging for a while now, and the hectic pace of investments in China has been cooling off too. All of these factors have combined to rein in the economic growth of China’s economy to 7.4% as of 2014, which is the lowest since 1990 – the year that marked heavy sanctions on China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.