Bangalore, December 14 2011:Leader in bearings, seals, mechatronics and lubrication systems SKF, has opened a Global Technical Centre in India (GTCI), in Bangalore. Reinforcing its strategy to create Technology Centres enclose to its customer clusters. SKF has invested around Rs 500 million in the GTCI and will employ approximately 400 engineers working in the areas of product engineering, development and testing, as well as a global laboratory for metallurgy, chemistry and bearing performance analysis.

"India is an important market for SKF and we are committed to support the unique needs of customers in growing economies. At the same time, we are focused on world leading research and innovation both in India and internationally,” said Tom Johnstone, SKF President and CEO at the inauguration event today, Dec 14, “One of our driving forces is to deliver significant energy and carbon savings to our customers with our solutions”.

The opening of GTCI is part of SKF’s technology strategy to develop a global product development and engineering organization. The new Global Technical Center is the second development phase and will incorporate the existing Global Testing Center, opened in 2009 and the Automotive Development Centre, opened in 2004, both of which are located in Bengaluru.

“With the launch of GTCI, our customers in India will benefit from “closer to home” availability of SKF’s global knowledge and expertise to address the growing need inIndia for newer technology development at a faster pace,” says Shishir Joshipura, Country Head, SKF in India. “Additionally, over the last two years, SKF opened three factories in Ahmedabad, Mysore and Haridwar to meet the growing demand of customers and the expanding product base in the region.”

SKF is in more than 130 countries and has 15,000 distributor locations worldwide employing 44,742. www.skf.com