Team WCI caught up with Mr. Sandeep Sood, CEO & Country Head, General Cable Energy India Pvt. Ltd to review the performance status of the new plant, which was formerly inaugurated in last April & the strategy ahead for the Indian market.
Wire & Cable India: Provide us a quick review on how the plant is performing?
Sandeep Sood: General Cable in India has one big facility at Baddi (Himachal Pradesh), which is segmented into four product lines in alignment with the four market verticals it operates under. The copper division of the plant has been split into two segments of building wires & flexibles and instrumentation & control cables. Likewise the aluminum division has also been segmented into the power cable & overhead conductor lines. In Asia, India is the only plant of General Cable, which is capable to manufacture overhead conductor with ACSS technology. As far as capacity utilization is concerned, aluminum section is adequately loaded, while the copper section has been commercialized only recently.
WCI: Highlight the current and future application segments of your products?
SS: To begin with our focus has been on the business segments which consume aluminum cables & conductors, i.e. the power transmission & distribution segments in the private space.
WCI: What’s the strategy for future?
SS: Within the global theme of One Company, though the Indian entity would be sequentially & appropriately be introducing most of the “Safe Products”, manufactured by General Cable, worldwide, the foremost strategy would be to load-up the Indian asset completely. India, being the 4th largest market for wires & cables, the operating strategy is aimed at garnering leadership position within the organized & safety conscious business segment of the total market. Globally, all our 50 plants operate under an integrated supply chain module and hence India would be strongly leveraging this integrated might of the global organization, while harnessing the local knowledge of our skilled manpower.
WCI: To leverage upon your global synergies do you intend to make India as a manufacturing hub?
SS: This is something, which we have already started doing and you will be happy to know that in 3 months of firing this plant, we commenced physical exports of special aluminum wires to US, post having attained the mandatory UL certification within flat 90 day period – a testimony of our global knowledge & local technical prowess. We have also exported some other special products to South East Asia and are in the process of building on this global expertise of ours. General Cable as a brand has its own innovative strengths having integrated operations worldwide gives us the advantage of leveraging the global strengths. The investment in the Indian facility is made with specific goal to look after the Asia Pacific Region, which is a key focus region for General Cable.
WCI: Tell us more about your innovative strengths?
SS: General Cable globally works on the basis of a few well defined business imperatives. The biggest and foremost amongst them is CSR; embedded in this imperative is the strongest one of Safety. We at General Cable follow the Safety theme of “zero & beyond”, which implies that we not only target & work towards attaining zero accidents within our plants, but take this Safety initiative right up-to the families of our cherished employees & valued customers. Safety, hence, is an important aspect for us as all our units are measured significantly on their safety performance, even ahead of the financial one. Safety also is the norm & measure which we provide to our customers right across our product line. The second major pillar of our CSR initiative is community development, which we specifically focused in & around the area where we are present, since we firmly believe & understand that our employees & the community around us has got to be happy and satisfied in order to help us build a sustainable business. The third pillar of innovation is akin to the DNA of living beings and is the genetic construct of our global operating model. We have different focus groups working on the different facets of wire & cable making and located across various geographies with one in India as well.
WCI: What kind of investment you do in the R&D facilities?
SS: All our investments worldwide on these activities are substantial. The pilot plants within the global development centers are well structured to meet the flexible needs of all research & developmental works. Needless to say these centres of excellence are well manned & resourced through a global pool of engineering & talented skills.
WCI: HR is an important aspect for any company, how General Cable addresses this aspect?
SS: It’s a big challenge across the manufacturing space. As far as the Indian wire & cable industry is concerned, there is a sizeable skill deficit, which keeps manifesting itself through delayed & disrupted customer deliveries. At General Cable, the emphasis is more on internal skills development by focusing on hiring academically proven professionals who have the hunger to learn & grow. So starting from me, we have a lot of our associates who are rank outsiders to the wire & cable industry, but have their own professional expertise & strength. Our people, invariably have a thorough understanding of systems, technology, applications like six sigma, lean manufacturing, but post recruitment do undergo an intensive in-house training for cable design, manufacturing etc. We try to bring in more of operational skills rather than the functional skills in cable making. For example the people on our cable making machines are being freshly recruited from ITI’s from nearby areas. We are running a program with them from last two years where-in we train them on different facets of cable making, machine operations and above all safe practices. Post the two years program they are absorbed as trained operators.
WCI: Kindly share your views on the wire & cable industry and power sector?
SS: Power is one major segment, which drives the industry and there is an immense potential for growth of power sector within India. This potential is well chronicled in the 12th plan document of Government of India and only needs to be cascaded & broken down to throw-up the embedded potential for the cable industry. The industry only needs to focus on this opportunity rather than continuing with the historical practices of making compromises to a large extent. Since the industry is now well matured and significantly evolved, it is not difficult for all participants to visualize & realize the value which gets delivered by offering good quality, safe products at an economically viable price point. As India embarks upon its journey of creating quality infrastructure for its socially awakened population, it is time the Cable manufacturers realize the significance of their products in keeping every Indian safe & happy; Cable is a very important area of risk and this is something which industry has got to realize and upgrade the manufacturing standards.
WCI: According to you when this thinking will change?
SS: We have seen over the years in the power sector that the private distribution companies take a different view in terms of their purchases for cable. What is required is that industry itself takes a knowledgeable view & position by creating the requisite awareness and sell & develop the product on the life cycle performance basis aligned well with the best-in-class Safety norms, which then will help in improving the industry perception & performance, to a large extent. The demand is already there for all of us to see & feel, so there is absolutely no need to continue with the age old practice of deploying pricing as a marketing tool for enhancing reach & penetration; The cake is big enough to accommodate sufficiently large amount of quality suppliers.
WCI: Where do you see the wire & cable industry in India in 10 years from now?
SS: I think it would be doubled from what it is today as power has been the leading consuming sector, thus far. It represents the huge investments both in capex and infrastructure creation, from generation to distribution, the entire cycle is going to be huge in the next 7 years. Beyond that there are other spaces like the urbanization needs of India, which are putting pressure on creating the infrastructure that will emerge as the major consumer of wires & cables. The mobility need of the country will become a huge driver for demand creation. These are the sectors for the future which have not been tapped yet. People are leaning to power sector because it is a huge consumer and easier to enter. So this has led to a skewed development of the wire & cable sector. As private sector with diversified applications, grows, there will be a niche created by the multinational companies like General Cable, who value the consumer more than the products.