Indore: ‘Indore has great potential to sell engineering tools and machines in the country and abroad. But lack of skilled manpower and logistic support is affecting the growth of this industry badly. The industry which was once registering high growth rate is now falling behind the target.
The Union and State Governments must find out solution to the problems. The State govt can take initiative to produce more skilled manpower and the Centre can help in the way of early completion of Indore-Dahod Rail Line, which would reduce the time in sending the consignment to JNPT.’
‘The major hurdle for export from the city is logistics. About 8 to 10 days are required to deliver goods to the ship because of container handling. This can be reduced to 3 days if the Indore-Dahod railway line is put into operation,’ says Rajendra Jain, Managing Director of ITL Industries Ltd, IndoreHe made these remarks while talking to this correspondent.
Jain is also CEO of e-Supply World, India’s first Industrial product supply portal with over 1.3 lakh products. ITL, a BSE-listed company since 1993, came into existence about 25 years ago with its own indigenous designed & developed India’s first Double Column Bandsaw Machines. It offers a wide range of horizontal and vertical Bandsaw machines with 52 different models having capacity from 100 mm to 2000 mm featuring manual, semi automatic, fully automatic, NC & CNC models.
An MTech, Fellow of Institution of Engineers and Hon PhD from Burkes University, the UK, Jain said that metal cutting is most important activity in any engineering industry, because the raw material bars are cut into pieces to make components and parts.
Jain said: ‘Till 2011, this industry was growing at a rate of 15-20%, but in the past 3 years it is recording minus growth by 30% because of overall slowdown. With the change in scenario, the expected growth in coming three years should be around 20% annually.
Talking about hurdles faced by these industries, the MD of ITL says, ‘Skilled manpower is a major hurdle in the engineering industries in MP, which includes workers as well as engineers. Proper attention is required from the State Government to enhance outflow of ITI & Polytechnic and also focus is required to give “in plant” training to these newcomers before they are employed.
Referring about the problems being faced on the export front, Jain cites the examples of ITL itself which is exporting its machines to both developed and developing countries. The industries are facing problems both in import and export. Facing serious quality problems in bought out items, which are manufactured by other companies like Electrical, Electronics, hydraulics etc.
To overcome such problems ITL will have to import such components to fit into the export machines. On the hand, at the export front, they have to wait to dispatch the shipment up to JNPT over 8 days. Reason is the dispatch of shipments up to JNPT completed in three stages. Hence, it takes such a long time. Indore-Dahod new line can be a solution, but Western railway is not paying due attention towards the problems of the exports. Jain claims that if the hurdles removed, then this industry can register spectacular growth rate.
Talking about the ITL industries Jain says ‘ITL has started developing Metal sawing machines since 1985 and all the machines have been established as import substitute. Most of the machines have been made first time in the country.’ ITL has been recognized as in house R&D unit by Ministry of Science & Technology.
In the field of Engineering and Automobile Industries Indore is also known for Double Column Type Bandsaw Machines. ITL introduced such machines in 1987 in the country and sold around 7000 machines across the country and abroad. Also, with time Indore also become “Mandi” of Bandsaw Machines as 9 more industries have started making similar machines in and around Indore.
