Gasfuse launches novel LPG safety device

29 March 2001

That India's numbers, especially when it comes to the educated, trained and skilled, are its strength, has got yet another endorsement. This time from Down Under.

Australian LPG safety device manufacturer, Premier Fosters Pty. Ltd., has tied up with Gasfuse India Ltd., to manufacture a proprietary gas safety device, Gasfuse, in India.

Apart from the attraction of a 54-million domestic LPG user base in India, our sub-continent is viewed as an attractive manufacturing base, given its traditional manufacturing strength, engineering skills, the ability to produce quality goods, and the ability throw up all this in required numbers.

Despite Premier Fosters being in the business since 1992 and their claim to being the largest LPG safety device manufacturers in the world, this is the first time that the company is moving beyond the Australian shores. And that too, to India, which it has chosen with a view to making it their global sourcing base.

"Australia is not a manufacturing country. It has great technical know-how and is strong on innovation, but it does not have the right capacities. Indians have the engineering skills, and Indian manufacturers talk the right numbers with the right capacities," said Geoffrey Fosters, inventor of 'Gasfuse' and chairman and managing director of Premier Fosters, at the inauguration of the joint venture unit at Pirangut near Pune.

Premier Fosters has, besides providing the technical know-how, invested 10 per cent in the Rs 7-crore project. The project will have a debt equity ratio of 1:1, where the major investors will be the Aurora family who run a chain of hotels in Pune.