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A new process technology comes
to town
Mahindra Sintered Products Ltd, a
51:49 joint venture between the Rs 5,000
Crore Mahindra & Mahindra Group and
GKN, UK, the world leader in powder
metallurgy parts, has entered into a major
strategic alliance with Micro Met GmbH,
Germany which is a leading producer of copper
powder in the world.
The joint venture will produce high-grade
copper powder by the process of atomization.
Copper powder is a raw material and MSP
requires to produce sintered bearings and
parts, which are used by the Automotive,
Auto ancillary industries and in domestic
appliances like food processors, washing
machines, etc.
 MSP
has been producing copper powder, for over
four decades, entirely for captive
consumption, by using a process called reduction
of copper mill-scale (a type of copper scrap),
at its plant in Ahmednagar. The plant
has been put up with a total investment
of Rs 4.5 Crores. The investment has been
minimum because MSP has modified existing
equipment and most of the new equipment
brought in to convert the Ahmednagar copper
producing facility to the new technology
was sourced indigenously. Some critical
equipment has been imported from Germany.
Over the years, due to technological changes,
availability of copper mill-scale is becoming
scarce and therefore the raw material is
becoming expensive. MSP for some time has
been considering upgrading its plant and
using a newer technology - that of atomization,
in which case the raw material is available
in plenty and therefore the technology is
not only cost-effective, but the copper
powder produced is also of much superior
quality.
 Says
B M Kataria, MD, MSP, "Though
we could have set up a plant with in-house
expertise, the problem was that our consumption,
and therefore our requirement is only 500
TPA, but to be economically viable, the
minimum capacity of the plant would have
to be at least 2,000 TPA. So in '97 we met
the representatives of Norddeutsche Affinerie,
of which MicroMet GmbH is the
high-tech subsidiary, and they showed interest
in a strategic alliance with MSP to produce
atomised copper powders. After several rounds
of talks, in September '99 we signed a formal
agreement to set up a new plant at Ahmednagar
with technology from MicroMet GmbH and a
substantial buyback arrangement by them."
This, points out Mr Kataria, makes
the plant viable because the capacity of
the plant is 2,400 TPA, out of which MSP
would use 600-700 TPA for its own captive
production and in the very first year 1,000
tons would be bought-back by MicroMet GmbH.
This buyback quantity would increase in
the subsequent years to almost 70% of the
plant capacity. As a result, the plant breaks
even in the very first year. "If
MicroMet had to put up such a green-field
plant it would have cost them at least five
times the amount in this part of the world,
and about ten times in Germany,"
points out Brij Kataria, managing
director of MSP.
According to Claus Heitmann, Managing
Director, MicroMet, the German company
which has been selling about 1,000 tonnes
of copper powder to Japan and Korea can
now look to increasing its market share
in these countries. With the Korean market
consuming 4,000 tons annually and Japan
using close to 7,000 tons, MicroMet is aiming
at capturing about 30 per cent share in
the Korean market and about 10 per cent
in the difficult Japanese market.
 It's
a win-win situation for both MicroMet and
MSP, because, the technology has been provided
free of cost to MSP and it would meet MSP's
copper powder requirements by using a state-of-art,
cost-effective production technology, which
has already started producing copper powder
of consistently high quality, benchmarked
to international quality. Lastly, this would
also result in substantial increase of export
turnover of MSP, which is already exporting
sintered parts to advanced countries like
UK, Germany, Japan, and the USA.
Address:
#146, Mumbai-Pune Road, Pimpri, Pune - 411
018,
Phone: 747 2632 / 747 2931
URL: www.mahindrasintered.com
Text: Rahul
Surkund
Photo Courtesy: Mahindra Sintered
Products
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