India, a stong market for Oerlikon: Customers Meet

“The manmade fibre (MMF) market has recovered in the last three months from the two impacts of demonetisation and GST,” said Andre Wissenberg, Vice President, Head of Marketing, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Oerlikon, while speaking on the challenges for the manmade fibre industry in a global environment. He was speaking during Oerlikon Man-made Fibers’ ninth Customer Meet on January 25, 2018 at Mirasol Resort, Daman. Wissenberg was all praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiatives in making India an unbeatable player in textiles. Oerikon’s customers from in and around Daman flocked to hear the latest developments from Barmag / Neumag during the event.

Oerlikon Manmade Fibers with the divisions—Oerlikon Barmag and Oerlikon Neumag—is the world market leader for filament spinning systems, texturing machines and BCF carpet yarn, staple fibre spinning as well as nonwovens solutions. Oerlikon Barmag has also established itself as a successful niche-market supplier: winders for special yarns, special applications and tape and monofilament systems are developed and manufactured at its Chemnitz site. Oerlikon Neumag is the worldwide market and technology leader for complete plants for the production of BCF carpet yarns as well as synthetic staple fibers. Furthermore, Oerlikon Neumag is also a leading supplier of a wide range of nonwoven technologies from spunmelt to airlaid technology.

Wissenberg added, “For GST, the government had to make certain concessions on the GST rate as well as some procedural changes to stabilise the industry. Industry is still in the process to understand and analyse the new system of taxation and the impact on their business.”

He continued that India has a huge potential for the development of MMF industry. “In comparison with per capita consumption of textile raw material, India holds the top position with 54.46 in cotton MMF followed by China at 18.82 and rest of the world at 28.72.”

During the evening, apart from Wissenberg’s presentation, a total of seven other presentations took place from key players from Oerlikon.

“The years 2017 and 2018 have been, quite surprisingly, good years for Barmag and Neumag in India”, said Juergen Vogel, Sales Director, Oerlikon Barmag. He added, “It was surprising because it was inconsistent with the overall Indian economic situation in the last two years. Economy was in difficult phase, at the same time the margins in the filament market was also very tight. Focus was on cost reduction. Almost all projects were to fill up CP capacity and reduce optimise cost. Most of the projects were financed by German banks.”

Vogel also shared the top 20 installed capacity of Barmag in 2017. Reliance was leading with around 7,00,000 tpa, followed by Bhilosa with 5,00,000, Wellknown with 4,50,000, Filatex with 2,50,000 and so on. In FDY, market share up to 2018 based on numbers of ends sold were Barmag with 49.3 per cent, TMT with 22.2 per cent, Toray with 5.3 per cent, Teijin with 8.9 per cent, Murata with 0.5 per cent and Chonglee with 13.8 per cent.

Jochen Adler, CTO, Oerlikon Manmade Fibers Segment, gave a detailed presentation on a digital journey along with the textile value production chain.

“In POY, market share up to 2018 based on numbers of ends sold were Barmag with 60.6 per cent, TMT with 8.7 per cent, BCFMP with 20.5 per cent, Dupont with 8.2 per cent, Jwell with 1.8 per cent and Rieter with 0.1 per cent,” said Vogel.

Dr Wolfgang Ernst, Head – Service Sales, Oerlikon Manmade Fibers Segment, took the customers through the latest technological developments.

A combined presentation on the latest innovations in synthetic staple fibre (PSF) and bulked continuous filament (BCF) was given by Martin Rademacher, Vice President, Head of Sales, and Gerrit Van Leonen, Director, Staple Fiber Sales at Oerlikon Neumag.

Andre Steingass, Regional Sales Director, Oerlikon Textile Fast East, spoke on texturing in a new dimension.

Narain Aggarwal of The Synthetic & Rayon Textiles Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC) was the special guest speaker, where he spoke on the future of manmade fibre industry.

Wissenberg concluded the event by sharing the sales figure of Oerlikon Manmade Fibers segment in 2017. Region-wise, China is the stronger market for Oerlikon with 51 per cent market share with India taking the fourth position with 11 per cent share. In terms of business line, POY holds the top slot with 30 per cent share, DTY with 16 per cent, spares with 10 per cent, FDY with 11 per cent, and nonwovens with 4 per cent share.

Oerlikon Manmade Fibers Segment captured a significant share of the business in the filament equipment market, where a high level of demand prevailed, particularly in China. This contributed to the significant increase in orders and sales, and consequently double-digit operating profitability for the segment.