Sector needs $8 billion investment to support Make in India initiative: IIF official.

Indian foundries have to produce 25 million tons to 30 million tons of castings a year in the next 10 years to support the Make in India initiative. Last year, the Indian foundry industry produced 11.35 million tons of cast components in ferrous and non-ferrous categories. This year, it expected a 10% growth over the last fiscal.

“This can be achieved by creating additional capacity and improving productivity,” said Sanjay Shroff, vice president, The Institute of Indian Foundrymen (IIF). “Besides, the Indian foundries have to increase the scale of operations, mechanisation, monitoring and controls.”

Investing in technology
He urged Indian foundries to invest in technology and processes, quality assurance, value addition, cost competitiveness, recycling, waste reduction and skilling of the workforce to achieve the set goal. Mentioning that existing manufacturers and multinational companies, which were planning to make India a manufacturing base for their global operations, would go in for major capacity expansion.

“Foundries will need to invest $6 billion to $8 billion to create growth opportunities,” he said.

There are 4 500 foundries in India, largely in the MSME sector, in various foundry clusters. At the current production rates, the foundry sector’s annual turnover is $18 billion to $19 billion. This, however, constitutes only 10% of the global production in terms of weight.

During 2017-18, the foundry sector exported castings worth $2.7 billion against $2.3 billion in the previous period and it did not want to increase exports further as it wanted to meet the huge domestic demand.

IIF was also evaluating the prospects for setting up sand reclamation centres at Belagavi, Kolhapur and Coimbatore.

While urging customers to address genuine price adjustments, Mr. Shroff said only then foundries could survive, make reasonable profits and supply quality products without any compromise.