For the first time in nearly a century, The Royal Mint and the MMTC-PAMP India have partnered to strike The Royal Mint’s gold sovereign commemorative coins in India.
With UK Prime Minister David Cameron leading the largest ever trade delegation to India, several new trade deals were announced on Monday.
While the InterContinental Hotel Group is to expand in India by building 13 new hotels over the next few years, the Wolverhampton-based British Health Care is set to open its first primary health care centre in Delhi.
British retail company Debenhams is opening 10 new stores across India by 2017.
The UK Government set a target in July 2010 of doubling bilateral trade to India from £11.5 billion up to £23 billion in 2015. Trade grew, on average, at over 20 per cent in 2010 and 2011 to £16.8 billion.
The UK Government announced that it would support the creation of a new pan-India network of British Business Centres by 2017.
Cameron is accompanied by over 100 companies, including more than 30 small and medium sized enterprises.
In a statement, Cameron said, “As India grows, it needs a partner that can support its ambition, in infrastructure, in energy, in healthcare and more.
“It wants its business to have unrivalled access to European and global markets and its students to get the best education in the world. Britain can do all these things and more.”
While retail architecture firm Benoy has won a new contract to design a shopping mall just outside Bangalore, Mott MacDonald has been appointed design engineer for six stations of the Rs 14,132-crore ($2.6 billion) Hyderabad metro project.
Porvair has been selected to design and build char filtration systems in Jamnagar.
Hampshire-based Serco has also announced a partnership with ICICI Bank to jointly service payment solutions for the Indian transportation industry.
Other investment announcements by Indian companies include Ashok Leyland setting up its first overseas technical R&D centre in Warwickshire at the MIRA Technology Park; Polaris expanding its operation in Belfast; Hinduja Global Solutions expanding its TalkTalk operations in Preston; Sahara to open a new International India Centre at the University of East London and Tata Consultancy Services to set up a secure, delivery centre in Liverpool.
Acquisitions were also announced - TVS Logistics Grouop has acquired UK company Ricoh and Monarch Realty and Developers, a Mumbai-based property developer, acquired a third care home in the UK.