There can no longer be any doubt as to the intention of Pawan Ruia, chairman of the Ruia Group (Calcutta / India; www.ruiagroup.co.in), to build a major, internationally operating sealant manufacturing company for the automotive business.

Following the recent acquisition of Meteor Gummiwerke (Bockenem / Germany; www.meteor.de), Ruia’s bid for the insolvent competitor Sealynx Automotive (Charleval / France; www.sealynx.com) has, according to French media reports, now been accepted.

This means the Indian conglomerate, which operates primarily in the fields of tire production and machine engineering, has now taken over four European producers of sealing systems. In addition to Meteor and Sealynx, there is also the previously acquired Draftex Automotive (Grefrath / Germany; www.draftex.de) and the Turkey’s Standard Profil (Istanbul; www.standardprofil.com), which it acquired at the beginning of May. Ruia himself has told the Indian media that the sealant activities account for sales of USD 750m or around half of total group sales.

On an international level, that would be a very respectable size. Cooper-Standard Automotive (Novi, Michigan / USA; www.cooperstandard.com) and Toyoda Gosei (Tokyo / Japan; www.toyoda-gosei.co.jp) are, with sales of USD 1.22 bn and USD 950m respectively, not very much larger, and SaarGummi (Wadern-Büschfeld / Germany; www.sgtechnologies.de) with EUR 360m has already been relegated to fourth position.