Business

India Is The Most Promising Market For SAURER

SAURER has completed almost a year post integration of assets from Oerlikon Natural Fiber Machinery and Accessories business. How these assets performed in last one year?

First of all, we had extremely smooth transition from Oerlikon to SAURER. To further smoothen the operations, we set up a lean organisation with five independent units which are fully independent in their decision making and this has shown good results. The customer response is much faster than it used to be in the past and we are successful to turn this into additional business. So, for the first year we have had a growth of more than 10% in a declining market.

We understand that investment in China is not up to the mark. How do you see the China market for short fibre spinning machines in short and medium term?

The reason why Chinese entrepreneurs are not investing is because several companies have incurred losses due to high raw material cost, the minimum threshold set by the government and also because the installed base has rather low productivity. So to survive in this market conditions, one has to invest in higher productivity machines, higher speed and automation. And we now see a clear trend that companies who can provide a true solution to speed and automation are gaining market share.

In this situation, is SAURER making the most in China?

Yes, we are considerably growing in China because of our tailor-made solutions offered to our customer to meet the market needs. In China, market needs have changed completely in the last couple of years and SAURER offers customised solutions to meet these demands.

Which other markets do you feel that SAURER would be doing well in the coming years?

I think the most promising growth market for us is India. In India, natural fibre is very important for the government and they keep supporting this sector. Also, the quality of the spinners is very high and thus, they would be able to conquer the world's market share with their yarns. Other important market which offer growth opportunities are Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, as well as the United States. In Turkey we expect a stable growth.

You mentioned USA. Which are the areas that SAURER is doing better here?

United States is coming back to textile manufacturing. We are already supplying machines there. Traditionally, United States, in the last 20 years was more of a rotor than a ring spinning market, but lately several projects are announced in ring spinning.

US is a very mature market with highly experienced people. We had been there for more than 40 years with excellent service network. Now, we can leverage this infrastructure, experience and the relationships we have with our customers to our advantage. I expect a boom period which will peak over the next couple of years.

What is SAURER's R&D focus while delivering new products?

Our vision is to set new standards through innovation and we look at innovation as an investment. We believe in bringing constant innovations that benefit our customers. Therefore, we invest heavily in Research & Development. In fact, we have increased our R&D budget for this year by 10% for this year and will increase it further year by year.

Do you make new innovations available in all the markets or restricted to certain markets?

Usually, when we make any breakthrough innovations it is available to all markets. New innovations when launched, usually come with high end products but as time progresses, they are also incorporated to mid-range products. As many have noticed the newly launched Semi-Automatic Rotor Spinning machine BD6 has a lot of features in it.

Please elaborate more on the new semi-automatic BD 6 machines?

The new BD 6 from Schlafhorst has all the attributes to change the world of semi-automatic rotor spinning machines. It unites the outstanding economic efficiency of the BD technology proven over decades with productivity and quality that are only surpassed by a fully automatic machine like the Autocoro. With take-up speeds of up to 230m/min, the BD 6 produces packages of a quality comparable with Autocoro packages.

How has been the response at ITMA Asia for SAURER?

It has been very positive. The number of visitors was higher than expected. What surprised us was, that the share of international customers was much higher than previous exhibitions here in China. I estimate that almost two-thirds of the visitors which we received in our booths were from outside China. We had visitors from South Korea, South East Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Egypt.

Were you able to conclude any large deals over here?

Yes, we have concluded deals and had some serious discussions. But a lot of effort and work has to be done prior to the conclusion of the deal.

So, I am not counting any one for the moment.