Bedmutha Industries Ltd. manufactures wire rope, tyre bead wire, galvanized wires, galvanized patented wire, phosphate patented wire, etc. The company is among leading manufacturers of wire and has recently added a new plant at Nardana, Dhule to augment its production. Wire & Cable India had a brief chat with Vijay K. Vedmutha, Managing Director, Bedmutha Industries Ltd. wherein he elaborated about the company’s recent expansion and its expectations from the expansion.
Wire & Cable India: To start with, tell us about Bedmutha group.
Vijay K. Vedmutha: Bedmutha Group was started in 1988 with a wire-drawing unit. In 1990, we put a galvanizing unit, and we have been steadily expanding since then 1998 to 2002, we expanded significantly through various acquisitions. Going further with our expansion scheme, we launched our successful IPO in 2010 wherein we got the encouragement for our mega project expansion at Nardana, Dhule. The unit is already under commissioning. Its wire rope division will start commercial production from May 2015.
WCI: Tell us about the products you are manufacturing with their respective capacities.
VKV: As of today, we have two plants, one in Sinnar and the other one in Nardana, Dhule which is our new mega project. Put together, the capacity is 11,000 tonnes per month from both the plants. Segments we are serving span across all types of industries, from power sector to agriculture, spring industry, automobile and infrastructure industry.
We are trying to diversify our product range with the new plant, where a new capacity has been added by way of tyre bead line. The company is also expanding into mainstream wire and rope manufacturing. Moving ahead with our diversification, we have planned to manufacture non-ferrous products namely copper busbars, copper rods, copper strips and copper foils.
WCI: Would you please share some financials of your company?
VKV: Last year’s turnover grossed at Rs. 250 crore. This current financial, we expect to cross Rs. 400 crore mark. Once all the capacity additions are in place and start operating, we expect a turnover of around Rs. 1200 crore. But, that would happen somewhere near 2016-17.
WCI: Elaborate further about the expansion that is going on.
VKV: Expansion is in the field of wire. Basically, we have put up state-of-the-art facilities in the new plant. The new plant sprawls across 50 acres with all new imported machineries installed, to serve export and domestic markets. We are aiming high productivity with this plant to fulfill maximum customer’s requirement. We have a FIB patenting galvanizing line, earth wire machines, fine wire machines, tyre bead line, rope machines and machines for manufacturing copper products.
WCI: What is the total cost involved in the expansion?
VKV: The new expansion costs Rs. 268 crore.
WCI: What capacity do you expect to add with the new expansion? What would be the overall capacity?
VKV: For steel and steel wire, there will be 7000 tonnes of new capacity with the expansion; our existing capacity was 3000 tonnes; so put together it would amount to 10,000 tonnes. We have an installed rope capacity of 600 tonnes and for copper 250 tonnes per month.
WCI: As regards the technology and the machinery, who are the major suppliers?
VKV: We have installed a patenting galvanizing line from FIB (Belgium). Wet machines from M+E Italy, Rope machines from Korea, China and Europe, Wire drawing machines from Swaraj (India).
WCI: Have you set any prospective targets with the new capacity?
VKV: With respect to market, we are now targeting the whole of the world, and mostly we will be focusing on Europe and US where quality is appreciated. African and South Asian countries are also within our marketing purview.
WCI: What would be the ratio of exports to domestic market?
VKV: We are aiming a 50:50 export to domestic supply ratio. We have started slowly, but we want to gradually step up our supply on the export side. This year we may be around 5-10 percent of total supply. Next year, we will take it to 30-35 percent. However, within two years we wish to reach to 50 percent export of total supply capacity.
WCI: You have been recently elected as the president of the SWMAI. Tell us about SWMAI and your plans as the president.
VKV: Steel Wire Manufacturers Association of India (SWMAI) is the apex body of steel wire manufacturing industries in India. Under its fold are all bigwigs as well as small players of the industry. Bigwigs such as Tata Steel, Usha Martin, Nirmal Wires, Rajratan Global and Aarti Steel with many other small and young players are among members. Since 1980, SWMAI is involved in organizing activities for steel and wire industry. The association has addressed many issues of wire and cable industry over the last three decades.
With the new government and emerging market scenario, the organization with me as its president will be focusing on increasing the membership thereby increasing the association’s overall representation on the behalf of steel wire industry.
Larger players are already a part of it, but smaller units are not there. We will promote them to become the member of the association. For increasing the membership, the association will have zonal focus with zonal team working in the assigned zone. Since each of the zones has different set of issues and problems which needs to be sorted out at the zonal level and then transmitted to the central level where the apex body can consider it.
The issues of various Free Trade Agreements (FTA) hammered by the government and its impact on the domestic players will also form the core to be represented to the Government in our future activities. The association will be representing the industry to the government over the issue as how these FTAs are influencing the domestic market and will also represent to various Ministries to resolve the common issues faced by the Industry.
The ever-persistent issue of the demand of wires will be dealt seriously. To generate the demand we will liaisoning with various government departments like the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL). We will also focusing on looking for new areas of wire applications which will automatically translate into increased wire demand benefitting all the members.
WCI: How do you look at the market in the future?
VKV: With the stable government in place and the tone of “acche din”, we all are optimistic of positive growth. If you see the sentiments of manufacturers six months prior to now, you can see the change, which are evidently positive. We really have to improve upon our efficiencies, productivities and other things to become more competitive. Things definitely should be better and it will happen. As far as wire industry is concerned, we all are ready to serve the growth of the country and to help the infrastructure grow as wire basically goes into infrastructure.
