Diebold Inc. is acquiring an automated teller machine (ATM) manufacturing plant from its contract manufacturer, Tata Infotech Ltd. in Mumbai, India, the company announced Friday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In 2002, North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold, and Tata Infotech entered into a contract manufacturing agreement by which Tata Infotech set up a facility to manufacture Diebold ATMs in Goa, India.
Tata Infotech in Mumbai is an IT services and hardware design and contract manufacturing services company. Diebold is the biggest maker of ATM machines.
The announcement by Diebold that it had entered into an agreement to purchase the plant in Goa came a few hours after Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS), a software and services outsourcer in Mumbai, announced that Tata Infotech would be merged with TCS. Both TCS and Tata Infotech are part of the Tata Group in Mumbai.
Diebold’s decision is not linked to the proposed merger of Tata Infotech with TCS, which is primarily a software services operation, according to Michael Jacobsen, a spokesman for Diebold. In its original contract manufacturing agreement with Tata Infotech, Diebold had the option to purchase the plant from Tata Infotech after a certain period of time, Jacobsen said. “This announcement reflects that we simply exercised that option,” he added.
Diebold will continue to work co-operatively with Tata in other areas important to its global business, such as software development and supplier support, said Eric Evans, Diebold’s president and chief operating officer, in a statement Friday.
The 30,000 square-foot facility in Goa is equipped with modern manufacturing equipment, including testing facilities and production and inspection equipment to undertake prototyping and fabrication, according to Diebold.
The company will use the Goa facility to supply markets in India and some countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia, Jacobsen said. Diebold’s other ATM manufacturing facility in Asia is in Shanghai.
