SKP Bearing Industries is a manufacturer of the tiny, high-precision metal parts - needle rollers, cylindrical rollers, and steel balls - that sit inside bearings and let everything from car gearboxes to wind turbines spin smoothly with less friction. Founded in Gujarat in 1991 by a husband-and-wife team and led by an IIT Bombay-trained engineer, the company spent three decades expanding from a single-product shop into a multi-product supplier, then vaulted onto a second continent in 2024 by acquiring a 95-year-old French manufacturer out of insolvency. The recurring approach is import substitution with a global twist: make rolling elements that match or beat the quality of foreign suppliers, particularly Chinese ones, and offer domestic and international OEMs a single integrated vendor who can supply from factories in both India and Europe.
Business segments
Two engines that feed each other - a precision-manufacturing core built on four product families and a dual-continent factory footprint, and a smaller renewable-energy business that powers the plants and sells the surplus.
1. Precision rolling elements: the parts that make bearings work
SKP makes the needles, rollers, pins and balls that bearing manufacturers and automotive OEMs buy by the million, and it is one of the few suppliers anywhere that can deliver all four product types from a single roof across two continents.
- A factory in France, not just India - the 2024 acquisition of Valette et Gaurand Industries in La Talaudière gave SKP a European plant that specialises in stainless-steel rollers and balls, so global customers can now choose between Indian and French supply depending on tariffs, logistics or end-market preference. The French facility also unlocked a key customer relationship that SKP had been unable to win from India for over a decade, with potential revenue of roughly ₹100 crore by FY30.
- Sold directly to OEMs, not through middlemen - the company supplies bearing manufacturers and automotive OEMs directly, and has passed Maruti Suzuki’s MACE audit to earn “Green Supplier” status, which signals a direct, qualified supply relationship. Customer switching is slow because rolling elements are critical to safety and performance; buyers start with small volumes and scale up only after SKP proves reliability over time.
- Three Indian plants, each with a distinct job - Plant 1 is now an R&D and machine-building centre; Plant 2 in Wadhwan makes needle rollers and cylindrical rollers with an installed capacity of 1,700 MT and is adding another 2,400 MT; Plant 3 in Lakhtar, commissioned in late 2023, is a dedicated high-precision ball facility that recently expanded to roughly 2,000 tonnes per year of capacity with superfinishing lines and automated optical inspection. The ball plant alone addresses an estimated ₹1,200 crore market.
- Quality infrastructure that doubles as a moat - the company holds IATF 16949 certification for automotive quality management and operates what it describes as India’s only ultra-precision tester with 0.1-micron capability and 13-nanometre sensitivity, which is vibration-proofed for alternating current. In-house labs run roundness testers, contour testers, digital image analysers and metallurgical microscopes, with checks at every stage from incoming material to pre-dispatch inspection.
2. Renewable energy: captive power that also earns revenue
Wind and solar plants built over two decades supply a considerable share of the factories’ electricity, cutting costs, while surplus generation is sold externally.
- Built incrementally since 2006 - the first windmill (250 KW) was installed in Gujarat in 2006, followed by a 1.5 MW wind turbine in Madhya Pradesh in 2015, a 0.6 MW solar plant in Madhya Pradesh in 2014, and a PM Kusum solar plant of roughly 2 MW (AC) in Gujarat more recently, alongside rooftop solar at the factory.
- Dual purpose: self-consumption and cost reduction - a considerable part of production runs on wind and solar energy, which reduces the electricity bill, and the company has commissioned a solar plant under the PM-KUSUM scheme.
Group structure and partners
SKP operates through an Indian parent and a single wholly-owned French subsidiary that houses the acquired VGI plant - no other subsidiaries, joint ventures or associates exist.
- The French subsidiary, SKP Bearing Industries Ltd. France SAS, was created to acquire Valette et Gaurand Industries through an insolvency court process in February 2024, and now operates as Plant 4 in the manufacturing network.
- VGI specialises in stainless-steel rollers (2.00-8.00 mm diameter) and balls (0.6-16.00 mm) in stainless steel, brass, aluminium and glass, and gives SKP a European manufacturing footprint that serves US, EU and Middle East markets while enabling technology transfer back to India.
- Prior to the French acquisition, the company had no subsidiaries, joint ventures or associates, and the Indian parent continues to operate from its registered office and works in Wadhwan City, Gujarat.