EPACK Prefab opens Sandwich Panel manufacturing plant in Tirupati district
The new plant, built on a 2,83,660 sft land parcel with a built-up area of 1,49,151 sft, is designed to meet the demand for energy-efficient, high-performance sandwich panels which are used in sectors such as cold storage, food processing, clean rooms, and industrial infrastructure.
The facility enhances EPACK's production capacity by adding 8 lakh sqm per annum, taking the company's total sandwich panel capacity to 13.10 lakh sqm per annum.
The Mambattu plant features a fully automated, continuous production line and the technology ensures high precision, minimal manual intervention, enhanced product quality, and reduced material waste, said Sanjay Singhania, Managing Director & CEO of EPACK Prefab.
'We are proud to align with key national missions such as Make in India, Aatmanirbhar Bharat and PM Gati Shakti,' he said.
The company is targeting a 30% to 35% market share in the prefabricated sandwich panel segment by the end of this fiscal year, propelled by its growing capacity and deeper regional penetration, Mr. Singhania said, adding that the plant, armed with an investment of ₹56 crore (excluding land cost), enhanced EPACK's ability to meet customer requirements with speed, scale, and efficiency.
The facility is aligned with EPACK's goals of sustainable manufacturing. It operates under approvals from the Tamil Nadu State Pollution Control Board in compliance with the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, and the Environment (Protection) Act.
Additionally, its automated systems support energy-efficient operations, reducing per-unit consumption and ensuring consistent, long-lasting panel output.
Nikhel Bothra, Executive Director, EPACK Prefab called the Mambattu Sandwich Panel plant a strategic step forward in the company's vision to build a robust, technology-driven manufacturing ecosystem across India.
The EPACK has received recognition from the Golden Book of Records for building the fastest-constructed structure in India at this very site—an industrial facility of 1.50 lakh sft within the APIIC Industrial Park at Mambattu.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
Transformer by Mint: The man shaping India's AI dreams, and continuing chaos at Vodafone
I've known Abhishek Singh, a senior bureaucrat, for some time now. He's been in the Indian tech ecosystem for a while, leading multiple government-backed digitisation initiatives. Now, as chief of the billion-dollar India AI Mission, he faces one of his biggest challenges in a public-service career spanning three decades. The reasons for this are varied. For one, the fact that AI presents a huge opportunity to a long-serving government official shows just how far the technology has come, and how it now affects everyone. More importantly, though, India could potentially gain or lose a lot depending on what we do with AI. Let me take you back a few decades. If you've read the venerable Chip War by Chris Miller (whom I had the pleasure to meet this January), you know that during America's push for leadership in electronic machines at the start of the world's tryst with semiconductors, India missed the bus. This allowed Japan and Taiwan to become global technology leaders despite being societies steeped in tradition. Then came the mobile revolution, and apart from emerging as a big global market, India almost missed the bus there, too. But then the Digital India and Make in India initiatives emerged, digital skills took centre stage, and India is now at a point where tech manufacturing is at least on the ascendancy. To cut a long story short, after having missed out on tectonic global shifts, India a chance to show with AI that it is not just the world's tech back-office and can lead from the front, too. Singh has a plan for this: building a voice-based foundational model that, along with India's government-supported base of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, would become India's next big export to the world after UPI. Here's why he thinks this will work. Speaking of tech's back offices… Jas Bardia, our resident correspondent for India's nearly $300-billion IT services industry, reported last week that there's a war brewing at India's mid-sized tech services firms, which truly believe they can take on the behemoths and win. India's IT services industry had began booming in the early 1990s, turning Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and the likes into the mammoths they are today. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every household around where I grew up had at least one person working at these IT giants. The world, however, as changed considerably since then. Over the past two years companies such as Coforge and Persistent Services have emerged as serious competitors, pitching themselves as specialised firms with a deeper understanding of technology. Where does this leave TCS and its ilk? Will they lose out? Maybe not so soon, but market dynamics are undeniably changing. Also changing is the top job at Vodafone-Idea The beleaguered telecom operator began its India journey as Command Telecom, a telco operated under Kolkata's Usha Martin. In 2000, Hutchison Max acquired Command, leading to the creation of network provider Hutch in 2005. In 2007, Vodafone entered the market and created Vodafone Essar Limited, the entity's longest-standing identity so far. Despite its more than three decades of history, the Vodafone-Idea entity of today is in perilous financial health. Last week the telco appointed erstwhile chief operating officer Abhijit Kishore as CEO for three years as outgoing chief Akshay Moondra's term ended. Now, being a CEO is a dream for anyone in corporate India, but Vi faces a veritable nightmare. After all, it needs to catch up with Airtel and Jio on quality of service while paying off its eye-watering dues and needing $30 billion of capital immediately. Suddenly, Kishore's job doesn't seem like a dream. One thing's clear, though – whichever way this goes, Vodafone-Idea's story will make for a fascinating case study in India's telecom sector for years to come. Mint's telecom correspondent Jatin Grover brings you all the juicy details. Finally, satellites on the frontline Last week, Jatin and I wrote about India's potential revamp of sensitive defence networks in an exclusive report. The full story: over the past two years, the government has been exploring ways for modern satellite internet providers such as Elon Musk's Starlink and Bharti Airtel's OneWeb to offer their services to India's defence forces. The reason is clear: it's now imperative to have secure and blazing-fast internet connectivity even in remote bounary regions. India needs drones, consistent satellite feeds, and a host of other technologies to stay ahead of its enemies. Older satellite connections—which serve only as a backup—aren't up to the task. In other news: the battle for Chrome, and an iPhone 'Air' Last week, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas put in a bid for Google Chrome, saying his company was willing to spend $34.5 billion to buy the world's leading browser. However, he doesn't have that kind of money. You see, Perplexity is only worth about $18 billion. Chrome, on the other hand, is valued more than $50 billion. Then, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman added fuel to the fire, asking, 'Is Google really selling Chrome? If they are, we'd be interested. Why not?" Welcome to Silicon Valley's newest battleground, one that we'll be tracking. We've already reported about Google and OpenAI's silent fight, and how it forced Sergey Brin, a Valley legend, back to the engineering table. Finally, its that time of the year when we expect to see new Google Pixels and Apple iPhones. This year, rumours are that Apple will launch an 'iPhone Air' as part of its range this year. If you've followed Apple, you'd know the 'Air' branding refers to ultra-thin and light devices. The first MacBook Air, in fact, remains one of the most legendary consumer devices to date. Will the iPhone Air live up to this? Here's what we've gathered so far. Transformer by Mint is a weekly newsletter that brings India's most important and interesting technology updates under one umbrella. As the world transforms with every day of innovation, Transformer will keep a tab on the impact that technologies will make in each of our lives. Published every week, the newsletter brings some of India's tech landscape's most insightful coverages until date.


Indian Express
2 hours ago
- Indian Express
S&P rating upgrade: how India earned it and what lies ahead
Last week was turning out to be a great one for the Indian economy even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a raft of reforms in his Independence Day speech. A day earlier, S&P Global Ratings had upgraded its rating on India to BBB from BBB-. The sovereign rating upgrade by S&P is significant for two key reasons. One, it came after a gap of nearly two decades; and two, it has meaningful implications for the Indian economy. India's upgrade pursuit The Indian government has over the last several years aggressively pursued the three global agencies — S&P, Moody's, and Fitch Ratings — for higher ratings that, in its opinion, better reflect the economy's fundamentals. In fact, New Delhi has repeatedly expressed its displeasure over the agencies' methodologies, saying they were biased against emerging economies. The Economic Survey for 2020-21 even had a chapter titled 'Does India's Sovereign Credit Rating reflect its fundamentals No!'. 'The rating of India did not capture India's fundamentals for almost a decade,' Soumya Kanti Ghosh, State Bank of India's Group Chief Economic Adviser, said in a note on August 14. So, what has convinced S&P that now is a good time for India to be given an upgrade? Steady economic improvement The primary reason is clarity on the government's finances. While the Centre has had a law called the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act since 2003 — it demands reducing the annual fiscal deficit to 3 per cent of GDP — it has rarely been met. In fact, only once since the Act's enactment has the Centre's fiscal deficit fallen below 3 per cent, in 2007-08, and that was primarily due to some financial jugglery. It was in January 2007 that S&P had last upgraded its rating on India. However, post the coronavirus pandemic, the fiscal deficit has been reduced aggressively from 9.2 per cent in 2020-21 to a targeted 4.4 per cent in 2025-26. Going forward, the Centre will start targeting a reduction in its debt-to-GDP from 57.1 per cent in 2024-25 to 49-51 per cent by 2030-31. Then there is growth. Despite GDP growth falling to a four-year low of 6.5 per cent in 2024-25, India remains one of the fastest growing large economies in the world — or in S&P's words, 'among the best performing economies in the world'. And this is real, or inflation-adjusted, growth; nominal growth — which is the actual increase in the GDP in today's prices — is even higher. When it comes to calculating the debt-to-GDP ratio, it is the nominal GDP that matters. As such, as long as nominal GDP growth is higher than the pace with which the debt is increasing, the debt-to-GDP ratio will keep falling. Another key factor has been the fairly low and stable domestic inflation, with S&P praising the Reserve Bank of India's inflation management record. As per latest data, India's headline inflation rate had fallen to 1.55 per cent in July — the lowest since mid-2017. Low and stable inflation is crucial to foreign investors as sharp increases in prices can erode their investments, weaken growth and the domestic currency, and create social unrest — all factors that can lead to a rating downgrade. A credit rating is nothing more than a measure of an entity's creditworthiness, or how likely it is that they may pay back borrowed money. If you pay back your loans and credit card bills on time and in full, your credit score improves. It is the same for countries. Most countries need to borrow money every year to fund some of their expenditures. The difference between the total income and the expenditure for a year is the fiscal deficit; the Indian government's is Rs 15.69 lakh crore for 2025-26. This has to be met by borrowing money from the markets, with the government paying interest on it. Now, if the government is seen as being more likely to repay the loan — which is what a higher credit rating indicates — then the rate of interest is lower. According to Madhavi Arora, Chief Economist at Emkay Global Financial Services, the rating upgrade 'can open the door for new pools of global funds' capital', resulting in 'lower cost of funding across macro agents' curves, including corporates — especially those borrowing abroad'. The rating scale To be sure, India's rating level with S&P has itself not changed — the country remains in the BBB category. It's just that it has gone from the lowest edge of it, or BBB-, to a more secure position. The next step would be BBB+. So where does the move to BBB put India on the rating scale? Ratings are divided into two rough classes: investment and speculative grades. Entities, including countries, in the former class are worth investing in, while repayment of loans taken by those in the latter is difficult to predict. But even within the investment grade, there are steps, and BBB is the lowest. According to S&P, a BBB rating indicates 'adequate capacity to meet financial commitments, but more subject to adverse economic conditions'. The next step is A, then AA, and finally, AAA, which signifies 'extremely strong capacity to meet financial commitments'. Who stands where Alongside India, S&P has the likes of Greece, Mexico, and Indonesia at BBB. Just above it, at BBB+, are Botswana (negative outlook), Bulgaria, Italy, Thailand, Uruguay (all stable outlook), and Philippines (positive outlook) A positive outlook puts a rating closer to an upgrade, while a negative outlook makes a downgrade more likely. Above this, with an A- rating, are countries such as Cyprus, Poland, and Malaysia. And right at the top of the tree, with AAA rating, are the richest countries in the world — Australia, Canada, Denmark, and Germany, among others. The richest countries are not guaranteed the best rating. Take the US, for instance, which was downgraded to AA+ by S&P in August 2011 — the first time the world's largest economy had ever been assigned any rating lower than AAA — days after the US Congress raised the country's debt ceiling. More recently, Moody's Ratings in mid-May 2025 lowered its rating on the US to Aa1 from Aaa reflecting 'the increase over more than a decade in government debt and interest payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns'. What's next? The implications of a better credit rating are clear — the Indian government should be able to borrow at a lower rate of interest. This has already occurred, with government bond yields in the secondary market on August 14 falling as much as 10 basis points, with the rupee's exchange rate also getting a boost. What about the next upgrade? Helpfully, S&P said on August 14 that it may further raise India's rating if the fiscal deficit of the Centre and states falls below 6 per cent of GDP on a structural basis. This, however, is a 'tough ask', according to Arora of Emkay Global. S&P itself expects the combined fiscal deficit to decline only to 6.6 per cent in 2028-29 from 7.8 per cent in 2024-25.


Time of India
7 hours ago
- Time of India
Bill to decriminalise certain minor offences to be introduced in Lok Sabha on Monday
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel The Jan Vishwas (Amendment) Bill 2025 to decriminalise certain minor offences to promote ease of living and business will be introduced by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal in the Lok Sabha on to the list of business of the lower House posted on the Lok Sabha website, the minister will introduce the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025, "to amend certain enactments for decriminalising and rationalising offences to further enhance trust-based governance for ease of living and doing business".Over 350 provisions are proposed to be amended through this to an official, the move will help create a more conducive business and a citizen-centric environment in the legislation is part of the government's effort to improve the business climate of the in 2023, the Jan Vishwas (Amendment to Provisions) Act was enacted, which decriminalised 183 provisions in 42 central Acts administered by 19 ministries and the Act, the government removed imprisonment and/or fines in some provisions. Imprisonment was removed and fine was retained in a few rules, while in some cases imprisonment and fine were converted to a his Independence Day speech on August 15 Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: "There are laws in our country, astonishing as it may sound, that provide for imprisonment over trivial matters, and no one ever paid attention to them"."I have taken it upon myself to ensure that such unnecessary laws, which place Indian citizens behind bars, are abolished. We had introduced a bill in Parliament earlier; we have brought it again this time," he government has earlier abolished more than 40,000 unnecessary compliances. It has also scrapped over 1,500 obsolete laws."We have gone to Parliament to amend dozens of laws to simplify them, always placing the interests of the public first," Modi said.