Chinese textile machinery makes inroads into India

Imports of machinery from China, Germany, Korea on the rise

As the textile machinery manufacturers from Germany, China and Korea bet high on Indian industry, taking advantage of the post quota period, the indigenous machinery manufacturers are losing out due to the delay in delivery. Therefore units in India prefer imported machines.

Going by the current surge in the export of German machinery to India, the VDMA, the trade body of the German Textile Machinery Association, expects that the export to India would touch 200 million euros, says an industry report.

India imported machinery worth 140 million euros from Germany in 2004, an increase by 30 per cent. It again increased by 84 per cent during 2005.

China is also gaining advantage in this field. A ten-member delegation, on behalf of the Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (Texprocil) and the Southern India Mills' Association (SIMA), visited China in November last year to evaluate the machinery there.

As of now, 40 to 50 textile mills from Coimbatore have evinced keen interest in placing orders with Chinese machinery manufacturers. "More than five mills have placed bulk orders for their projects, and 15 mills are mulling importing machineries," K Selvaraju, secretary, SIMA, told Business Standard.

The China Texmatech Company Limited (CTMTC) is likely to set up its shop in Coimbatore by the end of this month which will warehouse all critical components so that the mills in the region can make use of them.

Commenting on this, S V Arumugam, chairman of the association, said that the textile mills prefer spinning machines from China mainly because of the longer time taken by indigenous manufacturers for delivery.

"In order to survive in the highly-competitive market, India's cotton-centric textile manufacturers need to focus on upgrading their machinery besides creating new facilities and additional capacities. They require better machinery. Though domestic machines are competitive in terms of quality and price, the delivery schedule, which even extends to two to three years, is a matter of concern. Chinese machines require a delivery time of only four to six months," he added.

Moreover, the Indian textile machinery manufacturers are not able to bridge the demand-supply gap. The demand for the frames is almost double the supply in India, with a requirement of 4 million spindles a year.

To take advantage of the huge demand the Chinese textile machinery suppliers are planning to come out with a uniform pricing policy in order to enable the textile mills in India to firm up their orders.