Entering its golden jubilee year, mining and construction equipment and services provider Sandvik Asia, a subsidiary of the $13 billion Swedish company-Sandvik AB, plans to increase its turnover to Rs 5,000 crore from Rs 2,000 crore by shifting gears its gears from a mid-sized company to a bigger company. In an email interview with Pravda Godbole, Hakan Kingstedt, managing director and president, Sandvik Asia talks about the road ahead.
How much increase do you see in demand for high speed steel taps? How does Sandvik plan to address this?
The HSS taps that Sandvik manufactures is the ground-precision type, required for accurate threading jobs, particularly in automotive, engineering ,energy and aerospace sectors. All these sectors are growing in India and in other markets. We are therefore seeing a good development of order inflows in our new plant. Therefore, we are also making the necessary capacity additions in machinery and equipment.
Is Sandvik planning to expand its manufacturing facilities?
India is a major manufacturing and assembly base of Sandvik and an important global resource of products, processes (including recycling centres), design engineering, components and assemblies. Expansion and updating of all these facilities is a continuous process in all the five locations.
Where are the company's facilities located in Asia and are there any new coming up?
Sandvik has operations in as many as 15 countries all across Asia including India. Yes, we have some new facilities coming up.
Tell us more about your eco-friendly facilities. In what way are they environmentally sound, and how much did the company has to invest for such facilities?
Sandvik manufacturing facilities are planned and executed with utmost care for environmental aspects. The largest conglomerate of workshops in Pune is a zero discharge unit. It recycles all its effluent. Its eco-garden is a benchmark for the locality. All our factories are eco-certified and we practice rainwater harvesting. Significant investments have been made in the cemented carbide powder plants to clear the air from metal dusts. India is also the global recycling centre of cemented carbide for the Group as it participated in the development, re-engineering and establishment of the technology, at Chiplun, Maharashtra.
What is the market size and your share in your three main divisions: tooling, mining, construction and materials technology?
All three divisions are growing at high speed. Q3 in 2010 was the best ever quarter in Sandvik’s history in India. Growth was over 45 per cent compared with last year.
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Are there any India-specific products in your portfolio?
Sandvik products worldwide meet global specifications. None of the products manufactured are customised for a particular location. Demand for our products in different customer segments in India is high and our global product portfolio fits its demand. We undertake design and manufacturing of customer specific products, particularly in bulk material handling projects for mining and construction. These include bucket wheel excavators, ore and coal handling machinery at mines and ports, stackers, conveyers and the like. Tooling also supplies special products on customer requirement. But, all standard products follow international specifications.
May we expect any additions in Sandvik's product range?
Yes, we continuously add new products every year. In tooling, we have 8000 new products this year.
What is your current production capacity? Is there any ramp up in the offing?
We are continuously ramping up production capacity in India for metal cutting tools, mining equipment, mining tools, construction equipment, tube, wire and heating products. The products manufactured here meet both global and domestic demand. We also create opportunities for Indian suppliers by increased sourcing for exports to other Sandvik units.
Which markets does Sandvik focus?
India is one of the fastest growing economies in the emerging markets and is one of the key markets for Sandvik.
How much localisation do your products have?
India has a demand on high efficiency products and high productivity therefore we don’t do any localisation of technology. However, India is an important manufacturing base for the Group.
