Thiruvananthapuram, April 8: Keltron (Kerala Govt. enterprise set-up in collaboration with a Belgian electronic company in 1973-74) has crossed a landmark milestone in its history since its inception by achieving a turnover of Rs 522 crore with a net profit of Rs 20 crore surpassing the previous best of Rs 458 crore. The subsidiary companies of Keltron namely KCCL, Kannur and KECL, Kuttippuram also improved their performance by achieving a turnover of Rs 80 crore and Rs 13.85 crore respectively, a release said on Friday. Thus, Keltron group’s turnover achieved an increase of 15% compared to last year by posting a total of Rs 614 crore with a total net profit of Rs 23.15 crore.
Started initially to meet the demand of Indian consumers for electronic gadgets 50 years ago, KELTRON has a strong network of labs for product development, marketing and training of electronic engineers for country’s growing requirements. This performance is a major step towards achieving Rs 1000 crore by the year 2026 as envisaged in the Keltron master plan submitted to the Government of Kerala. The performance is achieved in spite of a loss of almost 2months of work due to covid pandemic. Also, the service disruption in the electronics components supply chain including price increases to the tune of 30% for electronics components, as well as the long delivery schedule (i.e. from 8 weeks to 40 weeks) had to be overcome. The performance of the Keltron Unit has been generally impressive due to strict program monitoring, overall performance review at the Government level and above all the wholehearted commitment from all sections of employees. The crossing of Keltron’s turnover of Rs 500 crore has been possible specifically due to a significant increase in Defence-related production for Indian Navy and NPOL in KEC/KCA to the tune of Rs 88 crore, IT-related services, Rs 197 crore and manufacturing and commissioning of systems for SAFE KERALA Projects (Rs 120 crore). Also, significant improvements in infrastructure have been implemented across all units of Keltron by using the Government plan fund of Rs 4 crore for Keltron and Rs 2 crore for KCCL. In the coming years as part of the Government of Kerala’s vision to transform KELTRON into an Electronic Hub, many new initiatives are being addressed especially in the field of power electronics, traffic enforcement systems, automatic motor vehicle testing systems, defence-related production facilities, software activities for defence related products, augmentation of data centre services and space-related production augmentation. A significant thrust is being given to modernizing infrastructure and the establishment of new facilities to progressively increase the manufacturing content to achieve a minimum target of 40% of turnover. Also, the upcoming supercapacitor production facility at KCCL, Kannur with technology to support from ISRO will be a major land work towards the Make in India initiatives of the Government of India and will be completed this year. (UNI)