NRB Receives Business Turnaround Award

NRB Receives Business Turnaround Award NRB Bearings Ltd. (India; BSE SMALLCAP: 530367) recently received an award for turning around its troubled Hyderabad operations. The Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce & Industry (website) presented NRB with the honor of "Best Turnaround / Revival of a Sick Industry - Small / Medium Scale" for 2004-2005. The FAPCCI was created in 1917, and now has more than 2,600 members. The organization oversees a variety of business awards, for such things as most export growth, highest productivity gain and other performance measures. The turnaround award is one of the more difficult qualifications, particularly in requiring the business be officially classified a "sick unit," under India's Sick Industrial Companies Act of 1985. Essentially, a sick business unit is one that has racked up total losses exceeding the value of the business, or is judged to be in nominal default on its loan obligations. The FAPCCI turnaround award requires not only that the business division continue to operate and be actively reversing its situation, it also requires verifiable performance in terms of improved working capital, product quality, cost reductions, marketing strategies and employee morale. NRB manufactures needle bearings and cylindrical roller bearings, primarily targeting the fast-growing automotive OEM market in India. Successes there are being leveraged into other markets. By 2008, NRB said it intends to more than double its manufacturing capacity for needle roller bearings, and more than triple its capacity for cylindrical roller bearings. The company has five manufacturing facilities across India, including the one in Hyderabad.