KHS India at Brau Beviale – Focus on a major role in Southeast Asia
With its headquarters and factory in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Westward India, on a production site of 18,000 foursquare meters, KHS Machinery Private Limited plays a significant function in supplying the KHS portfolio to customers from India and Southeast Asia. At Brau Beviale in Nuremberg, Germany, Susanne Blueml spoke with Partho Ghose, executive vice president and board member, about the strategies of the Indian visitor concerning the product portfolio and actual requirements in the packaging landscape.
Susanne Blueml: KHS India is active for over 20 years. How have its activities developed since its ancestry in 1997?
Partho Ghose: This Indian manufacturing found started from a rented manufactory in Ahmedabad, mode back in 1997. I was one of the founding employees, with five others who went about building and shaping a dream under the able leadership of Yatindra Sharma, our present managing director. Dorsum then, our chief goals were – to significantly improve the service standards for the KHS machines, which were already present in the market place before this company was gear up up, and secondly, to first manufacturing some of the key equipment like drinkable mixer, bottle washer and crate washer for returnable drinking glass bottle (RGB) operations in the soft drinks industry.
However, our first customers, Coca-Cola India and PepsiCo India, liked the idea so much that they encouraged the states to have more than on our plate. Soon nosotros were manufacturing complete packaging lines of 600 BPM (bottles per minute) except the key filler/crowner machine. Nosotros congenital the first filler in 2001. The portfolio gradually expanded in line with the requirement and relevance of the developing market in India. The year 2001 also saw our entry into the Indian brewery industry besides every bit the PET bottled h2o market. The glass bottles market was withal the predominant forcefulness in those days, but PET was slowly just surely making inroads. By 2002-03, we were delivering small to medium capacity PET lines right from air conveyors to pick-n-place packers but excluding the stretch blow molders. Over the next decade and more, nosotros kept increasing the Indian machines portfolio primarily with machines of higher chapters and more avant-garde technology. Our latest achievement was the successful inauguration of the mold shop within our Ahmedabad plant in Feb 2018.
How did KHS Germany support the activities?
The KHS Germany management lath has supported u.s.a. all along. KHS India started equally a joint venture, with sixty% ownership of KHS Germany. Over the years, it increased its share to more than 95% today but at the same time helped in expanding the pie. The visitor, which was created to cater only to the Indian market, slowly spread its wings and started exporting to markets in Southeast Asia, Cathay, and Australia with the support of KHS Deutschland. Our first lot of machines to Africa was delivered in 2012 for a brewery in Republic of cameroon. Besides that, KHS Federal republic of germany has continuously supported u.s.a. with a robust know-how transfer process, fantabulous training and professional project direction at every level.
What share of the machines of KHS India are manufactured in the state?
For that, you have to understand a little fleck nearly the segments in the KHS portfolio. If nosotros classify drinking glass bottle lines, PET bottle lines, or canning lines, different proportions are relevant. Drinking glass bottling lines with a chapters of 36,000 bottles per hour for soft drinks or beer take a very loftier percent of localized content, sometimes higher up ninety%.
Nevertheless, the moment information technology turns into a PET bottling line, where you accept to blow the PET-bottles from preforms, this ratio drops equally India does not build the blow molders, on-line inspection systems, or high-speed labelers or packers even today. When it comes to PET lines, between 30 and 60% is made out of Germany, and the remainder is coming from India.
In which steps did yous increase the portfolio?
I tin can surely give you lot the steps, simply a more in-depth insight would exist to know – whenever we make a motorcar – to what depth are we making information technology? This means that we could accept a smaller portfolio of machines in terms of machine blazon, but with a very high amount of localization in India.
The other way would be to motion more extensively on the surface and take a broader range of machines in the local portfolio but with higher import content of disquisitional components of the machines from Deutschland. These are the 2 dissimilar models of manufacturing which have been used from time to time in a nice balance, depending on the requirements of specific market segments.
In some means, our customers dictated this journey. They wanted u.s. to build maximum machines as fast equally possible, so in the starting time phase, nosotros committed ourselves to offer a broad multifariousness of machines from our local portfolio. But since nosotros took a lot on the plate, we focused initially on getting the most critical parts from Germany and offering value add-on in terms of assembly, testing, installation and projection management services while producing many non-critical parts locally. This benefited our customers with a loftier level of local currency transactions while, at the same time, providing us the animate space to develop a suitable infrastructure to augment our portfolio in the days ahead.
Besides the time saved by manufacturing in India, how much coin can your customers relieve in import taxes?
Indian customers have had to pay import taxes in the range of 5 to x% when importing machines from exterior. One might say it isn't substantial saving, just you lot are correct on one point – the time factor. The real saving for the customers is on timely service and availability of spare parts, more so during emergency pause-downs, during the unabridged machine life span of over 20 years. This saving is hugely additional when suppliers have a local manufacturing set-upwards.
Our primary aim was to cutting downward the majuscule cost of the machines when building in India. We realized that operating in a VUCA world with the minimum inventory of parts will aid the states to limit risks and remain toll-constructive. A local plant would not, on the other hand, assistance usa to cut automobile-edifice timelines, but lowering capital letter cost was a more than preferred trade-off for our customers.
This tendency among our customers, I must add, has slowly but significantly inverse over the years. They are now request us for much faster delivery, which has pushed us to augment our inventory of long-lead components so that nosotros also can cut down the delivery times.
Do you see that the actual plastics contend is changing the customer's strategies as well?
You lot are right that the plastics word has forced our customers to think differently. And I believe that plastics are non as harmful as they are fabricated out to exist in the debates, but our customers always have to respect the irresolute perceptions of consumers. And this perception has hugely changed against plastics; there is no denying that fact. Looking at the sordid conditions of our oceans and waterways and the deadly furnishings on marine life and environs, yous can't blame governments and regulatory authorities, too, for coming out with strict measures confronting SUP (single-utilise plastics). However, the problem in manus is not an easy ane equally viable alternatives are hard to come by. And some solutions implemented with skilful intent but in haste might plow out to be the problems of the hereafter.
Our customers are seriously brainstorming on the result and implementing specific proactive steps. There is no articulate trend emerging yet that they wish to move their primary beverage pack away from a plastic canteen to a metallic can or glass bottle. Almost of them are focusing on a robust post-consumer bottle collection and recycling road while also exploring options in parallel, around bio-degradable plastics.
But we do see an emerging trend to cut out plastics in the secondary packaging surface area. I give yous an example – a shrink packer with shrink film – customers are trying to go rid of that first. They can withal have a PET bottle, which can be put into a paper carton instead of a film shrink-pack. In this fashion, they can show to the consumers or the larger world that they are sensitive to this plastic pollution menace and have started taking the outset steps while contemplating more concrete steps for the time to come. Yes, they are doing that, and we run across the potential of irresolute procurement patterns in the coming years. Just, at the same time, we have to understand that there are no easy or existent alternatives today to replace PET. For instance, trying to shift even one-half of the Indian PET potable market to glass or tin seems a daunting task in my view due to various reasons, including just non express to – the much higher carbon footprint of glass and tin can, college cost and less convenience to consumers, and inadequate glass production facilities in India.
You said, PET is not every bit bad…
The benefits of PET as a packaging material are multi-fold, and, with the latest technological advancements, PET can provide answers that were traditionally available so far, with glass or can packaging only. However, what is incorrect or rather very bad is the littering past consumers and the lack of adequate drove and recycling of mail service-consumer PET. This can be resolved by implementing appropriate anti-littering regulations, awareness programs, innovative collection systems, and finally, recycling – initially 'downwards-cycling' just with a final goal of bottle-to-canteen recycling. Biodegradable PET or returnable PET could be other routes to explore, although they have their unique challenges likewise. As I said before, genu-jerk reactions by individual segments (for example, banning SUP) of gild might harm our environment further – as topics like increasing carbon footprint, water depletion, deforestation and climate change are no less important than plastic pollution. Solutions that are being discussed now are trying to tackle this plastic problem on a superficial level without taking a holistic view. This 'thinking in individual silos' approach, in my stance, is not a good way to solve information technology, simply if public perception is driving information technology, and governments are forced to make legislation on it, then the industry has to follow too.
Are at that place any plans to exercise cooperation with recycling companies?
I was in Düsseldorf a month ago, for the K bear witness – and we accept had discussions with prospective partners. For KHS, sustainability is a vast topic – all our solutions are focusing on sustainability and efficiency. It is likewise 1 of the top strategies of our customers, who are now getting into the EPR authorities – which means extended producer responsibility. Customers are coming to us for solutions to partner with them on this journeying. For case, both at the K show likewise as in this exhibition, KHS presented a 100 % recyclable PET juice bottle with enhanced bulwark properties for added shelf life and product safety. This is what we are doing from the technology side, and these are things we volition definitely proceed.
Yous are representing a German company in India and y'all are producing there. What about the conviction in your products?
When we started the company, and fifty-fifty today, nosotros have been using i tagline to define our offerings – 'German language applied science – made in India.' We are trying to convey that this is the best of both worlds – pinnacle-finish technology from Germany manufactured without compromise in India and backed by world-form local service. Quality and reliability are the cornerstones of this manufacturing philosophy, and we tin deliver it consistently due to the implementation of a very robust know-how-transfer (KHT) and quality assurance process. This is washed by a team which comprises of German and Indian engineers. When a machine is built for the first time or new applied science is introduced in India, this team ensures that the product coming to the Indian market is meeting all the requirements of the global blueprint of KHS and specific local conditions. We may offer certain features optionally to local customers merely nosotros never compromise on the essential design criteria and quality. In short, we deliver the same machine operation with an Indian-built KHS machine as we would exercise with a German-fabricated one.
Are there any opportunities to introduce Indian requirements in the machinery?
This has been a abiding discussion over the years. Let me allocate it into two main buckets – one is that if a German machine has got something as an inbuilt characteristic, I might offer it in Republic of india as an optional characteristic to give that cost vs. benefit choice to my customer. But this procedure is strictly controlled at our terminate and offered only afterwards careful study of the said feature(s) and not just because a customer 'wanted' it. This is i kind of differentiation.
The second one is that nosotros sometimes modify specific components within a machine, mostly third-party components, where meliorate local serviceability of the same, as an example, may trigger the demand to change. For case, we are not a specialist in pump manufacturing. Then if Federal republic of germany will select a pump for a standard global product from company A in Germany, the KHT squad might make up one's mind in favor of a visitor B due to its potent service support in Bharat, provided all technical specifications and performance parameters are met. The local service back-up thus might become a very large and deciding factor in the end.
How large is the share to suit the auto for the Indian market?
Information technology is difficult to give a pct. The guiding factor is the performance of the machine, one factor that is never compromised. For some machines, it could be even 0%, and in some others, it could be every bit loftier every bit 20%, only typically not exceeding that, because the basic car is not changed at all.
How long does information technology take to find the right partner in India, when thinking of these parts in the machine?
It is non very difficult in that sense since our first non-negotiable guiding principle is non to compromise on functioning. If nosotros are developing another third party, we beginning do a complete engineering science evaluation. But even when it has passed all the tests separately, it volition not be immediately inducted into the manufacturing programme until it has undergone 'on-field' testing for a minimum of 6 to nine months in a running machine. If it is non giving the desired results, we take it out and put the original component back.
Digitalization as a bespeak in the beverage marketplace – notwithstanding, even now developing: are there any differences in requirements in the Indian market as to information drove?
We do know that Manufacture iv.0 does include all of these points every bit machine learning, augmented reality and bogus intelligence. Information technology is going to be a game-changer, but information technology is probably going to bear upon our manufacture in India at the last. This is what I personally feel. Many of our big clients meet a lot of value in this for their manufacturing operations but may non exist budgeted players like u.s. to develop holistic solutions for them, for the uncomplicated reason that we are only catering to i part of the found, eastward.g., a packaging line. They want to partner with companies who are specifically in the It field and who have an umbrella agreement of the whole operations and deliverables of a plant or network of plants – right from resource planning to shipping and inventory management, and even beyond. This, notwithstanding, is non to suggest that we are non doing our ain developments inside our 'packaging line surface area' to provide significant value-adds to our customers.
Is KHS so influenced by an umbrella of any data transferring cloud – with machines as an object?
Yes, there is interface management. The machinery volition produce all the relevant data, and that will be done within the KHS boundary. The client, through an interface gateway, will collect and utilize the transferred data to another Information technology system – to exist developed by him. Within our boundaries, in that location will exist new areas, which are coming, for example, such as predictive maintenance.
But nosotros accept already been talking well-nigh it for some 5 or 10 years…
Aye, but the applied science space is apace changing, and you are now faced with a state of affairs that you take to develop, let u.s.a. say a predictive maintenance system, but without also many bells and whistles which drive upwards costs. At that place are also other challenges like obsolescence of parts/technology, IP rights, security concerns, and above all, adequacy building in the workforce through a very dissimilar unlearning and re-skilling process. This field is evolving so very fast that sometimes I wonder whether information technology is a skilful idea non to have a head-start, so equally to limit the cost of a rather bumpy learning bend! But that is another debate.
Back to the marketplace – are you expecting to develop further markets in your region?
This procedure started a few years ago. KHS India would likewise similar to play a larger office in the global strategy footprint of KHS, specially for emerging markets that need advanced solutions that are somewhat less expensive than the German ones and which are in a different level of evolution. We take to develop these markets in shut cooperation with our international colleagues. Nosotros run across in the future, and already some of our customers are saying it, that markets will open up in a more decentralized way. Clients will non be tied to legacy perceptions and thus won't carp whether machines are fabricated in Deutschland or outside of it. They will but exist interested in the machine performance monitored on a real-time basis. Our primal account customers are giving us this message, and nosotros also encounter information technology that way.
Which perspectives do you see for your production site?
We have plenty land, and we did purchase some additional property in the recent by, so nosotros are gearing up for time to come expansions. Currently, our German lath, who are too members of the Board of KHS Bharat, accept been very favorable to support the Indian operations to aid aggrandize our market presence as well every bit expand the solutions out of Indian plant for external markets.
I did mention briefly earlier that in 2018, we started a completely new mold store inside KHS Bharat with state-of-the-fine art technology and loftier-end automatic machines. Ahmedabad is the 2nd facility in the KHS world, also Dortmund, to start manufacturing molds for blow molding machines fabricated in Federal republic of germany. Since then, and we are just in the 2nd year, we have already delivered shut to 900 molds. This excellent success has additional our confidence to practice more than in-house manufacturing projects. The manufacturing fourth dimension for a fix of molds takes, let'due south say, a week if nosotros talk about a mid-size motorcar, once the drawings are available and the design is approved. We shall also implement a mold design center in Ahmedabad in the side by side phase, which will help our customers with quick turn-around times for new market launches, every bit the entire process from basic pattern to shipping will and then happen under one roof.
As well this, we come across a lot of topics in sustainable product at our customers' sites. We are providing solutions that are using less energy, water, and utilities, and all such initiatives in favor of sustainability and efficiency will continue to get summit priorities from united states of america. Another topic very dear to our eye is continuous knowledge enhancement. Be it in the grade of a global engineering hub or a world-class training university, and we volition go along investing and developing this expanse in the years ahead.
Mr Ghose, thank yous for this overview.
Thank yous.
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Source: https://packagingsouthasia.com/type-of-packaging/rigid-plastic-packaging/focus-on-a-major-role-in-southeast-asia/
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