Elgi Electric and Industries Ltd., part of the Sara Elgi Group, is the market leader in every product category that it operates in. Be it overhead traveling cleaners (OHTCs), yarn conditioning plant (YCPs), bobbin transportation systems (BTS), or metal & fire detection and diversion systems, Elgi Electric commands a significant market share in each of these products and is confident of its sustained leadership despite growing competition.
The year 2013-14 has been quite good for Elgi Electric. Although volumes in OHTCs and YCPs have been more or less the same compared to the previous year, growth has come from bobbin transport systems, says Mr. N. Ravichandran, Executive Director, Elgi Electric. The company had a 20 per cent overall growth compared to the previous year with a healthy order book for the current year.
Referring to the OHTC segment, Mr. Ravichandran says a lot of changes have taken place in this product category due to changes in the configuration of spinning frames. Initially spinning frames had 720-1,200 spindles, manual doffing, then 1,440 & 1,632 spindles with auto doffing, and more recently 1,824 spindles with auto doffing and compact spinning. The longer the frames, the larger the capacity, hence a lower number of OHTCs required. Also with long frames, more powerful OHTCs are needed to cover the entire distance within the given time. It doesn’t end there. Today all spin frames are fitted with BTS, which means the structure is wider and needs more powerful blowing and suction capabilities.
Considering all these aspects, Elgi Electric has built a more robust, powerful and high-performance model, Nugen XL, which can meet the most demanding requirements of the industry. The company sells on an average close to 2,000 OHTCs every year.
Coming to YCPs, Elgi Electric is holding a very strong market share. It continues to follow the traditional cylindrical design from Germany which is energy efficient, but it has improved on the pumps and controllers, including the touch screen facility for ease of operations and improve performance. “We are trying to create awareness on the need for using yarn conditioning plants. In fact, mills which are focusing on the export market have now made it a standard practice to condition the yarn and export. This also gives them better realization, in addition to yarn quality improvements. Currently the company is offering the cylindrical type YCPs, with wide capacity range from 300 kg/batch to 1,800 kg/batch to cover all sizes of mills,” adds Ravichandran.
As mentioned earlier, the overall market for OHTCs and YCPs are growing at a standard pace. It is BTS which has made significant progress in recent years. With increasing automation on spinning frames and use of auto doffing, BTS is now becoming a standard equipment in all the new projects. One of the first fully automatic BTS projects was executed at Arvind Ltd. by Elgi Electric, and the system has been running successfully since last three years and received two repeat orders from a mill recently. With growing labour shortage, mills are looking at automation solutions. This has resulted in increased demand for automatic BTS solutions.
Elgi Electric has received and executed a good number of orders for BTS in the last couple of years. Today it is the only Indian company capable of supplying fully automatic BTS systems.
And finally ARGUS metal and fire detector solutions. Here again ARGUS is the global leader when it comes metal & fire detection systems, and Elgi Electric has partnered with this company for the Indian market. Earlier this system was used only in blow room material feeding line. But now the system is getting installed even in the carding area where a lot of waste is generated. This has further enhanced the scope for these systems.
Mr. Ravichandran further observes that some of the recent fire accidents in textile mills have increased the awareness and the need for such systems. Customers are fully prepared to invest in such systems rather than taking chances. Though very costly in the event of any major fire accident, there are insurance clauses which charge a lesser premium when such systems are installed.
Elgi Electric clearly has the advantage of being part the industry and worked with customers for nearly four decades now. The company works very closely with OEMs right from the initial design stage. This gives Elgi Electric a huge advantage over competition in terms of the time taken to fine-tune and perfect the product. Elgi Electric also has its own group-run spinning mills in which they have been able to test the new products and technologies and perfect them before commercially launching them in the market.
Beyond the product and its performance, he says, the biggest strength of Elgi Electric is its strong service network. It has a well-equipped service network team of over 40 people across India, in addition to the sales partners (Voltas, Super Sales, T4 Texultants, etc.) service teams, and we are continuously supporting our clients, training them on all the new technologies.
Mr. Ravichandran concludes saying that Elgi Electric is targeting an annual growth of 20-25 per cent. The company is expected cross the magical figure of Rs. 100-crore turnover in 2014-15. It has its hands full with OHTC, YCP, BTS and Argus. The company wants to consolidate its market leadership and then consider new product lines which will complement the existing range by 2015.