Chennai, April 07: Germany-based ALZMETALL, a world leader in precision tabletop and column drills, is eyeing tie-ups with at least two Indian companies this year.
“We have been getting lot of enquiries on partnerships. But, I hope we will sign at least with two companies this year in India,” ALZMETALL CEO Roland Llg said.
Roland, who was here along with 50 delegates of German Machine Tool Builders’ Association to take part in a seminar on Machine Tools and Manufacturing Systems from Germany after a similar meeting in Pune, said the company under its Indian arm, Empire Machine Tools India Ltd, catered to the needs of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL).
The company has a headcount of 310 in India, he told a news agency.
The company’s production was hugely impacted by the global financial crisis, he said adding it lost around 30 percent of its businesses.
“We had an exponential growth of 69 percent in 2008. But, due to the financial crisis our businesses got affected.”
The company currently exports to Russia, US, Europe, Poland among other countries.
However, he was confident that the company, which exported its products to several countries, including Russia, US, Europe and Polad, would achieve its targeted turnover of 72 million Euros this year. “We reported a turnover of 72 million Euros in 2008. After the crisis, we hope we will reach the same target this year,” he said.
“Russia is very much close to our location and of the total exports 25 percent goes there”, he said.
German machine tools builders association (Verein Deutscher Werkzeugmaschinenfabriken) President Klaus-Peter Kunmunch said the industry, hit by global meltdown, was hoping to grow significantly during this fiscal.
“We have been growing at a record rate in 2008 but, due to the financial crisis, our businesses were down 30 percent. We hope we will come back to significant growth path in next financial year”, he said.
Admitting that the machine tools industry was the first to get hugely impacted by such financial crisis and last to grow compared to other sectors, he said, “Since September 2009 we are able to see some growth”.
“We are very optimistic (about the industry)….we hope the production would improve in September 2010”, he said. He said 30 percent of the machine tool industry production in Germany catered to automobile industry while the remaining to the manufacturing industry. “Sixty percent of the production goes for exports particularly to China, United States and to the Switzerland”.
India ranked eighth in the exports from Germany, constituting Euros 300 million.
India’s purchases of machine tools rose between 2004-2008 by more than 270 percent to touch 1.2 bn Euros, he added. To a query he said that the ‘incoming orders’ they were getting was improving over the last few months.
The association has representatives of 300 companies employing 66,000 people as its members.
–PTI