HMT’s last unit in Tumakuru shuts shop

In News:

This year’s May Day was a sad day for the workers of Hindustan Machine Tools Watches Ltd., a name once synonymous with watches and regarded “the timekeepers of the nation.”

Reason: The company’s major watch manufacturing unit at Tumakuru stopped its operations from Sunday (1 May 2016)

Some facts about HMT’s  tumakuru Unit

Ø HMT Watches Ltd. was established in 1979 with 2,100 employees and with 22 assembly ancillary units

Ø A profit making company till 1993

Ø The Tumakuru unit, with 326 employees, was the only factory which was functional of the four units of the once-flourishing public sector enterprise

Ø The factory has a capacity to produce more than 20,000 watches per month. However, now, it was producing 3,000 to 4,000 watches

Ø It had produced 3.95 crore watches, worth Rs. 1,353 crore, from 1978 to 2013-14. However, now, the factory was taking only institutional orders

Ø The Tumakuru unit was manufacturing Lalit, Elegance, Sona, and Dipti series of watches

Source: The Hindu