A comprehensive visit of the Freudenberg Chemical Specialities plant in Mysore, Karnataka in early August 2022 revealed the company’s futuristic, safe and innovative solutions for multiple industries with a keen focus on textile as one of their biggest revenue earner domains in India. An insightful interaction with Hitendra Bhargava, CEO and Regional Management Board Member Asia Pacific, Klüber Lubrication and Kanakaraju Thangavel, Chief Technical Officer, Freudenberg Chemical Specialities revealed to Sarada Vishnubhatla the latest market trends, emphasis on safety regulations, and focus on futuristic solutions in the textile industry.
A textile mill needs special lubricants and greases to ease the functioning of many different machine components. And Klüber Lubrication offers state-of-the-art products and solutions to the textile industries around the world.
Hitendra Bhargava, CEO and Regional Management Board Member Asia Pacific, Klüber Lubrication offers an overview of the industry: “India is growing in the textile industry by leaps and bounds. The total monthly exports of the country is pegged at US $ 36 billion, and the share of the textile products is robust and growing. Interestingly, many global markets are witnessing a reduction in the number of spindles being used and even some of the spindle mills have been shut down. These businesses are shifting to India and other countries such as Vietnam, and Bangladesh.”
Klüber Lubrication offers solutions that are designed to match individual component needs enabling optimal performance. As speciality lubricants, the brand covers the entire production process – right from the spinning, knitting, weaving, and finishing machines to the stenter frames. Klüber’s products and solutions are used in bearings, spinning turbines and pumps, open rollers, and spinnerets. Their solutions bestow long service life to needles, sinkers, slide rails and guide bars in the knitting machines with minimum maintenance need. For the weaving machines, Klüber has lubricants that can be used in minimum quantity to give longer gaps between maintenance of gears, gripper looms and chains. When it comes to finishing machines, these lubricants are resistant to water, steam, acidic and alkaline solutions for rolling bearings, compensators and rollers. They leave smaller residues in the stenter frames due to their high separating effect on the conveyor chains, adjustment spindles, needle bars and clips.
As per Hitendra, the Indian textile industry is on the brink of witnessing a boom in business in the next couple of years.
He shares: “Klüber Lubrication commands a robust market share in the spinning segment, owing to our strong strategic partner, Voltas Textile. Their reach extends to almost all the spinning customers. Klüber is the market leader in India when it comes to spinning lubricants. And we would like to leverage on that and get more OEM approvals to increase our market share because we have the right channel and the right group to market.”
Kanakaraju Thangavel, Chief Technical Officer, Freudenberg Chemical Specialities shares: “There are different sets of oils for all these domains. Some of our knitting oils need to go through something called the scourability. Traditionally, if there is an oil stain that is incurred during the knitting process, the procedure is to apply water or a surfactant to the area which is later dried. We have high scourability standards which allows for the stain to be removed easily.”
Making Sustainable Products – For the World
Klüber Lubrication is now working on sustainable products with base oils extracted from crude or further processed from it. Instead of the products that are refined from the traditional petroleum-based products, the company is testing using vegetables and other similar sustainable materials as sources. The idea is to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. And that is true for the products that Klüber Lubrication has already launched and those still under development.
Besides working on the sustainable products, the company wishes to become a market leader from being a niche player in India and Bangladesh markets, primarily, by taking success stories from Turkish and Chinese knitting markets where they are doing well.
When it comes to the weaving segment, the company already has approvals under its belt from big OEMs, such as Itema, where they use Klüber oil in their manufacturing. Hence, the company is looking at surging ahead in the aftermarket in the weaving segment.
Kanakaraju explains: “We are working on sustainable products for both knitting and spinning segments. Knitting is much more complex when compared to the spinning industry.. For example, the oil formulation that is made for the knitting needle must be precise otherwise the needle will get corroded fast or the lubrication effect will not be up to the expectations. In either case, the needle will wear out fast. Our oil for knitting needles is both anti-corrosive and gives higher longevity.”
Hitendra is clear that: “We are looking at increasing our market share in the second fill. And we expect this to be a major growth driver for us in the future.”
Performance-oriented Products
Klüber Lubrication offers three different categories of products – Klüber oil, Silvertex, and a medium oil. All these are designed to deliver the cost versus performance parameter.
Kanakaraju says: “Klüber oil is a premium grade oil and it has the approval from major OEMs. In fact, during the manufacture of their machines, the OEMs list out Klüber in their lubrication chart.”
Klüber boasts of two types of global R&D centers, namely, lead development center and complementary development center. The former works on the major technological advances where the basic product research and development is undertaken. The latter develops products as per the market need.
Kanakaraju explains: “India is the lead development center for us in the open gear applications which are mainly for cement, sugar and similar industries where the gears are visible. This application mainly deals with loss lubrication where the lubricant is periodically injected. Our complementary development center caters to textile and other industries. Our India center creates products for the world. Similarly, we have customized global products of ours to suit the market requirements here.”
India-Centric Solutions
Klüber offers customized products and solutions to their textile customers in India. It is a well-known fact that the textile industry – whether in India or elsewhere – is forever looking at increasing the profitability while reducing costs and utilization of resources.
Speaking about the market share in the textile domain that Klüber enjoys, Hitendra says: “In the textile industry, we are the market leaders in spinning with almost 50% market share. In the knitting, weaving and finishing segments, we a much smaller market share and we have aggressive plans to grow fast in them.”
Kanakaraju quotes an example: “We have developed products that can be washed with plain water. Globally, these products are highly appreciated in the textile industry because these solutions eliminate huge effluent treatment costs and hence, they are welcomed.”
It is the company’s long-term strategy to make sustainable products and solutions that are customizable, even if there is an in-built challenge which is the invariable increase in the cost.
In the last quarter of 2020, Klüber Lubrication as a whole witnessed an exceptional growth where they matched the numbers in the previous year. In 2021, the company was much ahead of competition in terms of the recovery from the COVID pandemic impact while recording unprecedented growth compared to 2020. In the current year, Klüber is marching further ahead than they did in 2021 which means, as per Hitendra, the highest ever growth figures achieved in Klüber India to date, while continuing to grow over and above that in double digits.
Winning Culture
India is a cost conscious but significant market in textiles and Klüber Lubrication has painstakingly worked towards changing the mindset to look at quality and performance of the lubricants.
Hitendra shares insights: “Our spinning and knitting oils are bringing a change in the perception of the market by emphasizing on the high value for money and by delivering performance which outvotes the cost of the lubricants. Also, the fact is that spinning mills are known to be the one of the highest consumers of power, hence our energy-efficient products especially are designed to help them with that.”
But this comes with a unique challenge which is – how to measure the power reduction successfully? And the answer may just be around the corner, what with Klüber conducting its thorough research and working on success studies to show to the world.
Advantage – Klüber Lubrication
Customers are aware of the tremendous value that Klüber as a lubricant brand offers them. When the machine downtime is minimum or even eliminated completely, the worth of it is measured in terms of how much the resources have been saved.
Hitendra shares: “Today there are many spinning mills which are booked ahead and, in that context, they wish for continuous availability of their machines. Since, our lubricants give them the maximum performance, cost becomes secondary. Our products prove that the value addition that we offer is worth the investment on their part.”
Clearly, the USP of Klüber Lubrication is that their sustainable products offer longevity with superlative performance minus the downtime.