Shakun Polymers Private Limited is one of the leading manufacturers of compounds for the wire and cable market in the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, South East Asia, and Africa. The company’s products in both domestic and international markets are established with a diversified customer portfolio. The company is a subsidiary of Alphagary Limited and, hence, is a part of Orbia Group. In a conversation with Wire & Cable India, Mr. Rakesh Bansal, President, Shakun Polymers Private Limited, & Mr. Dipal Parikh, Commercial Director, Alphagary Compounds & Growth Initiative Leader, Shakun Polymers Private Limited, shared important details about the company’s journey, merger with Alphagary, product portfolio, and future plans. The company is working to add a new state-of-the-art facility at its Halol Unit IV, for capacity enhancement from 50,000 tonnes to 80,000 tonnes of production.
Wire & Cable India: Can you tell us about the history of Shakun polymers?
Rakesh Bansal: Shakun Polymers was incorporated in the year 1995 by the Bansal family. We made a humble beginning to manufacture black jacketing compound and subsequently started to manufacture PVC insulation and sheathing compound at our Daman facility. Shakun management has always focused on growing by introducing wire and cable compounds to meet the market and customer needs. We understood the future market needs for halogen-free flame retardant compounds and the opportunity to offer semiconductive compounds to meet the market needs, and ventured to manufacture the same by establishing a new facility at Halol, Vadodara, India. This increased our product offering and capacity and Shakun started to increase its presence in the export market. Soon our products were well accepted not only in the Indian subcontinent but in the Middle East and African regions as well. As of today, we can proudly say that we have 5 manufacturing units with a total installed capacity to produce approximately 50,000 TPA of wire and cable compounds.
As our next generation entered the business, Shakun’s management decided to increase our global reach, and hence we collaborated with Alphagary.
Dipal Parikh: In June 2021, Alphagary, an Orbia Company, acquired majority share ownership in Shakun Polymers Private Limited. Together, we are now on the growth trajectory by harnessing the power of integration, especially as Alphagary is a global wire and cable compound manufacturing company. Alphagary and Shakun are committed to investing in profitable growth through this venture to meet the domestic as well the global demand for HFFR compounds, semiconductive compounds, and UL-recognized PVC compounds.
WCI: Kindly elaborate on your product portfolio, emphasizing its features, applications, and advantages.
RB: Shakun’s product portfolio comprises Ecotek® halogen-free flame retardant compounds (thermoplastic and thermoset-cross linkable), Escontek® semiconductive compounds (thermoplastic and thermoset), FRTEK® flame retardant PVC compounds, VinylTEK® – TPR/PVC compounds, and PE sheathing.
Ecotek® our halogen-free flame retardant (HFFR) consists of thermoplastic and thermoset compounds. In our thermoplastic product portfolio, we cover almost the entire range of bedding, insulation, sheathing, and high-performance sheathing. From an application perspective, we cater to almost all the cable industries like optical fiber, power cable, instrumentation cable, and any other cable design that possibly has, or may have, the use of halogen-free thermoplastic material. For cross-linkable HFFR (thermoset), we are focusing on solar PV where compounds are meeting thermal endurance requirements, and oil and gas SHF2 requirements as per BSC and 50620. We also have building wires wherein we offer cross-linkable compounds for high line speeds and insulation and sheathing compounds for power and telecommunication cables. We are doing more developments on our cross-linkable technology with E-beam technology and have developed suitable applications for solar and railways (RDSO). We are continuously working with our customers to address other challenging applications and meet their enhanced performance requirements.
The biggest advantage of Shakun’s halogen-free offerings is that our customers get a good balance of properties, good line speeds, and good extrusion processability, along with the desired technical and processing support, and shorter lead times. We are affiliated with the Make in India programme alongside our competitive commercial terms.
For Semicon, our current offerings for bonded compounds are suitable for up to 66 KV, and soon with our new state-of-the-art continuous line being installed at Halol Unit IV, we are working towards offerings up to 132 KV, that meet both our domestic and global export market requirements. We have easy strippable semicon compounds to meet the requirements for different insulation layers, which is different than XLPE.
The key advantage of working with Shakun is that our customers get offered the shortest turnaround time on their new product development needs, with us being amongst the few companies who can offer such short turnaround times. This is due to our customer-centric approach, continuous thrust on R&D, strong understanding of the market needs and standards, and willingness of our customers to collaborate and re-collaborate with Shakun based on trust and past experience.
Watch: RR Kabel | Solar Cables | Solar Plant | Renewable Energy
WCI: What are the recent achievements and developments after Alphagary Group acquired stakes in Shakun Polymers?
DP: When Alphagary acquired a majority stake in Shakun Polymers in June 2021, the joint venture laid a strong foundation for growth by leveraging the strengths of both companies. Various new initiatives were taken to complement and enhance the product portfolio, capacity expansion at Shakun’s Halol facility with new investment in lines, and setting up a new state-of-the-art facility at Halol Unit IV. The JV has worked in bringing in the best manufacturing, safety, and product stewardship practices, expanding the market reach to new territories in the Europe, Latin America (LatAm) economies, and soon the US.
Alphagary also has been able to benefit by utilizing Shakun’s existing infrastructure to start its local manufacturing for a few of the grades of Megolon® halogen-free flame retardant compounds, complementing the Shakun HFFR offerings. In the near future, Alphagary plans to start local manufacturing of the GW series and a few products among its UL-recognized PVC compounds. Besides, Alphagary has also been promoting with the help of Shakun its Smokeguard® range of plenum compounds, Garaflex® and Garathane® range of flame retardant thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) compounds respectively.
RB: The management of Shakun-Alphagary JV is continuously looking at investing in profitable growth and thereby maximizing the value of the integration. The JV has some key growth initiatives outlined for better management and execution:
- Safety & Product Stewardship: Shakun has invested in and upgraded its facility to meet the stringent global safety standards and practices of Orbia. Our plants are regularly audited by the Orbia safety team to identify areas for continuous improvements. The safety of our people and communities comes first, and the Orbia team continuously shares and is willing to train Shakun’s team on the best manufacturing practices for our operations team and help them implement them at our sites.
- Capacity Enhancement: The JV has worked towards capacity enhancement at Shakun’s Halol facility from the existing 50,000 tonnes to approximately 80,000 tonnes. These efforts will help us double our capacity for HFFR and semiconductive compounds, and diversify the range of our offerings to meet the latest customer requirements.
- Global Reach: Alphagary team in Europe and LatAm have been supporting Shakun to increase the market penetration of our semiconductive compounds, cross-linked halogen-free flame retardant compounds in the respective regions. For instance, the Alphagary Europe team has established customer connections in Turkey and thus helped Shakun to commercialize our cross-linked HFFR compound for solar cable applications. We are also exploring similar opportunities in the LatAm region for semicon and cross-linked HFFR compounds.
- Knowledge Sharing: The JV enables each of the companies’ customers to get the best in terms of new products, technical and processing know-how, and access to state-of-the-art lab and R&D facilities, both in India and on a global scale.
WCI: Alphagary is known for its commitment to sustainability. How did Shakun Polymers incorporate this commitment within the company?
RB: Shakun is guided by Orbia’s sustainability strategy to achieve positive impacts across all our operations and offerings. We will continue to work on expanding and building on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to meet not only Orbia’s SDGs but also requirements from our global customer base. For example, we have installed rooftop solar panels to meet and tap into renewable energy sources for our manufacturing operations. We have also invested in rainwater harvesting and water recycling.
In the case of product development as well, we are focusing on recycling technology for some of our halogen-free compounds. Thereafter, we are also offering compounds for the renewable energy segments, encompassing solar, wind energy, and EV, among others, and contributing to the community’s need for sustainable solutions.
WCI: Recently Shakun Polymers received a 3-Star Export House certificate. Please elaborate on the scope of your international footprint.
RB: Shakun has always been an export-oriented company, with currently 60 percent of our sales revenue coming from exports. We export to 30 different countries, and the Middle East region comprises our largest market. Our R&D team continuously updates and enhances their knowledge of each region’s regulatory standards to develop products meeting those requirements. This has enabled us to successfully commercialize our offerings to major global wire and cable companies – thereby supplying to their sites across the globe.
Since our exports have been significantly increasing over the last 3-5 years, we were already a certified two-star export house. Subsequently, as a result of exports increasing, the checks and balances, and the best practices that we follow, we have been recognized as a three-star export house.
DP: Post-JV, the Alphagary team has been supporting Shakun’s team in expanding its semiconductive compounds and cross-linkable, halogen-free product exports to the European, LatAm, and US regions.
Also Read: Sarvasv Plan to Double the Production Capacity by Expanding Factory
WCI: What according to you are the USPs of your company, that set it apart from the competition in the market?
RB: There are many factors that work in Shakun’s favor. Our team dedicatedly works fast to understand volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) and translate those into critical-to-quality (CTQ’s) to formulate new offerings, thus providing round-the-clock application development and processing services. We are continuously working with customers to innovate and develop new offerings to beat the competition in terms of new product development cycles. We have a vast knowledge base of new materials in the market, and in connection with our R&D capabilities, pilot plant, and lab set-up we have been able to improve the performance of existing offerings and develop new product offerings in HFFR, Semicon, anti-tracking compounds, MVCC at a speed which is better or equal to the major competitors. We are always working to adapt to new technologies available in the market to provide customized compounds or solutions to the market.
We try to remain ahead by three or four years of our competition in whatever technologies we work.
WCI: What are your future plans for growth at your company?
RB: We are looking at organic and inorganic growth. Two things are very important for the company – we want to be closer to our customers and adopt newer technologies in terms of manufacturing. The two technologies where we are bullish are halogen-free-flame retardant and Semicons. In both areas, we would continue to grow in terms of volumes, product range, and geographies.
Summing up, the Shakun-Alphagary partnership will continue to invest in profitable growth and innovation. We will leverage the advantageous position of our cutting-edge technologies and R&D capabilities to scale up the operations to serve our customers with differentiated solutions.
