Mumbai: Under a joint venture agreement with Kinetic Elevator & Escalator Limited (KEEL), South Korean manufacturer of elevators, escalators and travellators Hyundai Elevator Company (HELCO) will acquire a 40-per cent stake in the Pune-based Kinetic group company, which will manufacture 'moving technology' products from Hyundai's portfolio of escalators, elevators, car parking systems, platform screen doors for metro rail transport, moving walks, material handling systems and related products.

Subsequent to Hyundai's stake acquisition, KEEL will be renamed Kinetic Hyundai Elevator and Movement Technologies Ltd and become the hub for HELCO's India operations and provide advanced moving technology products to India's infrastructure and construction companies.

The two companies have had a collaboration for 10 years with KEEL acting as Hyundai Elevators' exclusive India distributor, catering to high-rise, high speed and premium elevator market segment.

KEEL, which has a presence at 23 locations in the ountry, has installed about 1,000 units across India, with an additional 350 currently reported to be under installation in metros and mini-metros.

"Since its establishment, Hyundai Elevator has led the growth of global elevator industry with its steady research and development effort and high quality products, said Hyundai Elevator president Jin Cheol Song.

Song disclosed that HELCO plans to install nine cutting edge elevators in the world's tallest elevator tower, including one reaching a speed of 1,080 meters per minute. "Starting with advanced "machine room less" elevators in 1999, Hyundai Elevators has led the market with outstanding technologies like high-grade gearless traction machine, used mainly in high speed elevators, he said.

He also said, "Hyundai has also developed an elevator inverter that regenerates electricity while in operation to slash the buildings energy consumption for elevators by 60 per cent. Hyundai Elevator has a customer service centre with a GPS system thru which maintenance people can detect a problem before the customer comes to know about it. This is called Hyundai's 'before service'.

Hyundai Elevators was ranked the number one company in elevator installations in Korea last year and posted a steady growth of more than 15 per cent every year, becoming a market leader in Korea.

"India presents an exciting market opportunity for the vertical transportation and moving technologies industry. We look forward to aggressive growth in our JV with Kinetic. We will work together closely to roll out a basket of superior and advanced products for the infrastructure and construction companies of India," Song said.

Kinetic Hyundai will be headquartered at Pune and will have an all India presence for marketing and servicing various products including escalators, elevators, car parking systems, moving walks, platform screen doors for metro rail transport, material handling systems and related products.

Manish Motwani, director, Kinetic Hyundai, said, "As the Indian economy becomes world class, government spending on infrastructure as well as private investment in, realty, retail and entertainment segments will continue to increase. We see a huge market for high rise, high speed lifts, escalators and moving walks. Also with the infrastructure growing, demand for automated car parking systems, material handling systems for airports and industry, platform screen doors for metros will become a part of requirement for every project across the country.

"HELCO's well established technology and product range gives us a chance to exploit the fast growing infrastructure market in India in the fastest possible way. Kinetic Hyundai will for focus on all these areas and offer" total movement solutions" to customers. We will leverage various strengths of Kinetic group, including our knowledge of the Indian market, relationships in the industry, ability to market and service products across India and our group's experience in manufacturing towards aggressive growth of the JV".

The $600-million Hyundai Elevator Company of South Korea is a major supplier of elevators, escalators and moving walks in Korea, the US, Japan, China, the Middle-East, Southeast Asia, India and Europe. Hyundai also makes other products such as platform screen doors, automated car parking systems and material handling systems. It has its own manufacturing facilities in South Korea and China.

Kinetic Escalator and Elevator Limited is part of the Kinetic group and markets, installs and maintains state of the art elevators, escalators and moving walks; and is also a pioneer in car parking systems in India; providing advanced, automated car parking systems.