The die & mould industry seeks a level playing field and more sops from the government
By TEAM MT
In today’s fast growing die & mould sector, there is a dire need for manufacturers to improve brand and grow sales on an interactive platform.
And one of the ways that products can find brand value is when they are innovative, can offer new variety in manufacturing process to the customers, cover the entire supply chain to the tooling industry, and thereby provide a wide spectrum to choose from in meeting challenging faster deliveries demanded by customers of the highly competitive manufacturing sectors.
However, this industry is beleaguered by a shortage of capacities which is met through imports by OEMS. Most of them are concerned.
SC Kalyanpur, president, TAGMA and MD of Sridevi Tool Engineers, says, “This is an area of concern and needs to be addressed through better
liasioning and partnership working with the OEMs seeking their support in reinforcing their commitments to grow domestic production.”
There is a section of the industry that believes innovations in high-speed machining, applications, software and advanced technologies are necessary
to compete in the global marketplace. Moreover, a technology-savvy machine helps in reducing cycle times and lead times to users, and also lowers labour cost, offer advancements in rapid prototyping, and are fully capable of high performance milling and nopolish EDM burning, to reduce total operating costs. For instance, PPAP Automotive hasmakes automotive sealing systems that mainly caters to large OEM’s like Maruti Suzuki, Honda Cars India, Toyota Kirloskar Motors, Renault Nissan India, General Motors India, Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, besides their regular Tier 1 suppliers. The company is also known for manufacturing quality interior and exterior injection moulded automotive parts in India. While it enjoys a
technology transfer agreement with Tokai Kogyo, Japan, its customers are demanding higher levels of localisation in toolings, process and raw materials. But the company is now looking thinking of adapting the Japanese technology and going local.
Large technical industries find it hard that most technology is not easily available in India. They have to look outside the country and this hampers their pricing strategy. In so far as, subsidies are concerned, their counterparts in China and Far East have easy access to sops that are unavailable in India. It is for this reason that recently India decided that it would continue with anti-dumping duties against Chinese-made injection moulding machines for five more years. The government helped in the decision saying that without the extra tariffs against Chinese equipment, conditions will deteriorate for the domestic machinery industry. Maintaining the tariffs would work against the ultimate goal of the Indian government’s Make in India plan to modernise manufacturing. Under the campaign and the entry of top line global producers to India, there will be demands for high-performance machines also in the below 1,000mt sizes.
Since mould making is not a normal process of engineering, tool rooms need state-of-the-art technology machines like three-axis and five-axis machining centres with very high precision. “Besides the product designs are becoming more complex in shape and fittings. Mostly these equipments are manufactured in highly developed countries and are been upgraded technology wise continuously,” says Kalyanpur.
The equipment required in this industry involve high levels of technologies constantly upgraded and imported from highly developed countries with vast research capabilities and resources, hence they are very high in cost thus requiring huge capital investment. Relatively, low technology equipments made indigenously also has high import contents also results in high cost though marginally lower. Further, with short supply of trained knowledgeable manpower to run them manpower costs are high. Tool manufacturers needs various inputs which are mostly imports, from raw material, cutting tools and CAM essential support systems for effective productive use of the equipments resulting in high input costs. Overall making viability difficult.
Against this backdrop of high input costs on operation of the toolroom, the sale value of the tool/ die manufactured is up against the competition from other Asian countries that have a local production advantage of very low labour and material costs, along with benefits from bulk procurement of capital equipment made available to industry at low costs.
And some of the ways this can be tackled is modernisation/ upgradation of manufacturing facilities, funds at low rate of interest; and toolroom industry should be allotted special depreciation rates spread over three years for better RoI.
What would actually help their case is if duty reduction on imports of tools due to various WTO/FTA provide for a level playing field for Indian manufacturers, by simultaneous reduction in import duties on all the inputs used in the tool manufacture like raw material components, etc.