Owens Corning India doubles glass fabric knitting production to meet growing demand, especially for wind energy market

MUMBAI, India, February 23, 2006: At ICERP - the voice of the Indian Composites Industry - Owens Corning (OWENQ.OB), the leading reinforcements manufacturer in India, today announced it has added a second glass fiber knitting line at the Taloja, Mumbai plant of Owens Corning India Ltd., a joint venture between Owens Corning, USA and Mahindra & Mahindra, India.

In addition to the Taloja plant’s existing glass roving operations, this new capital investment only two years after the installation of the first fabrics weaving line will significantly increase the production of sophisticated multi-axial glass fiber fabrics providing Indian customers innovative solutions and choices to help them compete and succeed both locally and globally.

“This latest expansion of our fabric knitting capacity will benefit India in terms of economic development and energy conservation as our focus in India is aligned with infrastructure development, a national priority,” said Satish Kulkarni, Managing Director for Owens Corning India Ltd. “These highly technical fabrics are used in several key industries but especially for the wind energy market to supply growing demand in India and surrounding regions for continued growth of renewable energy sources such as wind power,” explained Kulkarni.

India’s power generation through wind energy has surpassed 4200MW making it the wind energy leader in Asia. The states of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are the leading regions for wind power in the country. India obtained the annual World Wind Energy Award 2005 for favorable policies enabling the proliferation of wind energy and emerges as the fourth largest country in the world in terms of a wind power generating nation after Germany, Spain and the US.

“The rapid investment in a second fabrics weaving line here at Taloja confirms Owens Corning’s pledge to our customers to offer tailored, low-cost manufacturing platforms and also demonstrates our commitment to sustain the company’s future growth strategy in India,” added Owens Corning Composites Business President Chuck Dana. “Increasingly, composites solutions are helping transform the lives of people, in India and around the world, by offering environmentally-friendly cost-effective solutions to some of the basic necessities such as providing clean drinking water and electricity.”

Owens Corning India Ltd., a five-time export award winner from Capexil and a leading foreign exchange earner, is one of the company’s many plants specializing in the manufacture of Advantex® glass fibre reinforcements, a boron-free E-glass with significantly improved corrosion resistance over traditional E-glass. Advantex glass fiber reinforcements from Owens Corning create integrated solutions and high value applications across a wide range of industries such as automotive, infrastructure (pipes, underground storage tanks), telecommunications and wind energy.

ICERP 2006 (February 23-25) is the 3rd bi-annual International Conference and Exhibition on Reinforced Plastics and is held at the state-of-the-art Trade Center in Chennai and is considered the platform for the Indian composites industry. Owens Corning is the key sponsor and is exhibiting at Booth B2-4/B13-15.