It's a double whammy for the Rajkot-based machine tools manufacturers. In last two months, while fresh orders have reduced by 35 per cent, leading to acute financial crunches, existing clients are also not coming back to procure orders that have been completed.
"As the country is feeling the heat of global slowdown, we are also not excluded from that. Our orders have been trimmed down by 30-35 percent during April and May. We are not expecting good business in June too," said Dinesh Khambhayta, honorary secretary of Machine Tools Manufacturers Association (MTMA), Rajkot.
Moreover, according to Rupesh Mehta, past president of MTMA, not only orders have been declined but clients have also been not interested to lift their orders. "Automobile and engineering industries are not in good position and this directly affected machine tools industry," said Mehta.
Players say that since machine tools are the capital equipment for any kind of expansion in the industries, currently no one is taking risk to expansion due to slowdown across the world. Add to that, with the rupee depreciating against dollar and other major currencies, imports of raw material has also taken a hit.
"Rajkot is known for its conventional machine tools and most of the manufacturers have small and medium scale units. To sustain in present condition manufacturers have started reducing production hours by 2-3 hours a day. Moreover some industries players also planned to expand but in current situation, they postponed the plans." said Khambhayta.
At 450-500 units, the Rajkot machine tools industry arguably stands at number position in the country as a cluster.
During financial year 2011-12, the cluster pegged a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore. "We had expected 25-30 per cent growth for this year but in this condition it is hard to achieve the same," Khambhayta added.
As a cluster, Rajkot alone consumes about 600-650 high value fully automatic CNC machine every year and according to industry sources, it is expected to cross over 750 this year.
According to industry sources since last few years share of local consumption of tools have also increased from 10 to 20 percent given the growth in auto parts, foundry and engineering industries.
