NEW DELHI: American luggage manufacturer Samsonite has made India its largest manufacturing base by tripling the capacity of its plant here to 7 lakh units per month with investment of Rs 250 crore, a top company official said.
Samsonite completed the expansion in two phases post Covid, after which its Nashik unit has surpassed its other global manufacturing hubs in Hungary and Belgium in production volume.
“We are one of the world’s biggest, for the Samsonite group, it’s one of the world’s biggest factories in terms of the number of pieces that we make here. And it’s only going to get bigger and bigger. The world looks to India. Our company also looks to India for a huge amount of growth in the coming years,” Jai Krishnan, CEO - India, Samsonite South Asia, said here.
Samsonite, anticipating greater demand after a travel boom started post Covid, is now looking for another location as part of its next phase of expansion within the next 12-18 months. It has started scouting for land in other parts of India as the land parcel at Nashik is fully utilised.
“Till 2019, we used to manufacture approximately on an average about 2,25,000 pieces a month, and that is when we felt the time had come to focus more on production from India and decided we would invest and expand,” he said, adding the location would get finalised within the next 12-18 months.
However, when the project was being executed, Covid happened in 2020, and business stopped because people stopped travelling and production also stopped. “But one good thing we did that time was construction, which had just started; we did not stop because we were quite sure that business and the country would bounce back very quickly, which happened,” he said.
The company, which is operating with three brands in India Samsonite, American Tourister and Kamiliant - expects with the supportive tailwinds as rise in economy, increase in disposable income, people are exploring the country, which is creating demand for luggage solutions.
Moreover, affluent people are now gravitating towards branded products such as Samsonite, he added.
The US is the leading market for Samsonite, followed by China and India. Krishnan sees India as the third-largest luggage market globally, and the momentum is clearly in its favour.