Corning Inc to set up 1st gorilla glass-making unit for smartphones in Telangana at Rs 934 crore

HYDERABAD: US-based specialty glass, ceramics and related materials and technologies provider Corning Inc is making India debut of its gorilla glass manufacturing business with Telangana.
The gorilla glass inventor will be setting up a facility to manufacture gorilla glass for smartphones of various brands in Telangana at an investment of Rs 934 crore through a joint venture with its India partner Optiemus Infracom Ltd.
Corning will be creating about 800 jobs in the state, Telangana industries minister KT Rama Rao announced on Friday, days after he met Corning Inc’s global operations executive Ravi Kumar, senior vice president John Bayne and government affairs director Sarah Cartmell in New York during a US trip late last month.
“Happy to share that Corning, one of the world’s leaders in material sciences has decided to invest in Telangana to setup a manufacturing plant to make Gorilla Glass for smartphones, for the first time in India,” he said in a social media post.
“Investment size of Rs 934 crore will employ 800 people but more importantly a strategic investment in manufacturing for smartphones and other electronic devices,” KTR said, adding that the investment will play a pivotal role in driving the smartphone manufacturing ecosystem in the state and in India.
Pointing out that Telangana is fast emerging as an electronics manufacturing hub, KTR said several electronics manufacturing companies are increasingly choosing Hyderabad as their destination.
“Foxconn made a significant investment in the state earlier this year, and now Corning’s investment in Telangana will propel a new era of smartphone manufacturing in Telangana and in India,” the minister said.
Senior Telangana government officials said Corning is yet to zero in on a manufacturing site and the government would be offering them land at various electronics clusters in and around Hyderabad.
“The team has not yet come to see land. Once they come they will see (land options). We have known electronics clusters and wherever they select it will be in one of the electronics clusters. Maheshwaram, E-City, Divitipally whatever they prefer,” Telangana industries principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan said.
The latest Corning investment in Telangana comes on the back of a joint venture it set up with SGD Pharma in June this year to put up a new glass tubing facility at Vemula in Mahbubnagar for making glass vials for the pharma sector using its proprietary Velocity Vial glass coating technology.
The facility, for which the JV company SGD Corning Technologies Pvt Ltd broke ground in June, is coming up at an investment of Rs 500 crore and is expected to be operational in 2024 with pharmaceutical tubing production to begin in 2025.