V Anbu, secretary, director general & CEO, IMTMA, reveals how the Indian machine tool industry can grow by leaps and bounds.
Tell us how the machine tool industry has fared in the last two years.
Year 2015-16 was encouraging for the Indian machine tool industry. Consumption reached Rs 10,300 crore in 2015-16 as against Rs 9,200 crore in 2014-15. Production reached Rs 4,750 crore in 2015-16 as against Rs 4,230 crore in 2014-15. According to the World Machine Tool Survey 2016 by Gardner, India ranked 10th in terms of consumption and 13th in terms of production. Demand is high for horizontal machining centres, cylindrical grinding machines, milling and boring machines and gear cutting machines.
Compared to India, how is the machine tool industry faring globally?
The global production of machine tools declined 12.4% in 2015. The output by principal producing countries was $80.1 billion. Among the major machine tool manufacturing countries, larger gainers (in dollar terms) were Russia with 7.6% increase and India with 1.2% increase. Top three machine tool producing countries were China followed by Japan and Germany. The output of the top three countries account for nearly 60% of the 2015 world production. China continues to be the largest machine tool consuming country in the world with about $27.5 billion worth of machine tools. Global consumption of machine tools amounted to $78.9 billion during 2015 and declined by 11.4% as against $89.4 billion during 2014. The top five machine tool consuming countries were China, United States, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. [Source: Gardner’s World Machine Tool Survey 2016]
How can Indian manufacturers match some of the global technologies and innovations?
The machine tool industry has good design and manufacturing competence for a wide range of products. The industry is able to develop machines in mid-level applications as well as special purpose machines. Indian machines are also price competitive in their range making them suitable for exports. Many SMEs are considering investing in CNC technology. Adopting advanced technologies will help them achieve high quality and precision machines.
Please provide figures on the domestic industry.
The Indian Machine tool Industry has around 1,000 units in the production of machine tools, accessories/attachments, subsystems and parts. Of these, around 25 in the large scale sector account for about 70% of the turnover and the rest are in the MSME sector of the industry. In terms of growth rate in 2014-15 and 2015-16, production in 2014-15 was Rs 4,230 crore, and grew to Rs 4,727 crore (growth rate of 12%); export was Rs 281 crore and grew to Rs 296 crore; and consumption in 2014-15 was Rs 9,267 crore and grew to Rs 10,376 crore in 2015-16.
What are the challenges faced?
The machine tool industry in India is comparatively small compared to any other manufacturing industry. User industries expect the latest technologies to produce high quality end products at competitive prices. This has made it imperative for the machine tool industry to take an inventory of present technologies and those it should develop. The industry investment in product development through R&D is currently around 2.5%. Abroad it is around 4%. We need to improve on this. Technological advancements will benefit the manufacturing value chain.
The industry has to compete for talent with other industries such as IT and retail. The gradual development of the industry and their inclination to become more organised, one can expect the level of imports to reduce for both medium and high technology in future.