“We can do everything now!”

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Why did Power Composites decide to open a new site in India?

India is one of the coun­tries with the strongest eco­nom­ic growth. But so far there is no local man­u­fac­tur­er for hol­low com­pos­ite insu­la­tors despite the high demand that the Indi­an mar­ket has for these com­po­nents. Togeth­er with our local part­ner Aditya Bir­la, we aim to sat­is­fy this demand in the future. Our new Aditya Bir­la Pow­er Com­pos­ites Ltd. plant in the city of Halol, Gujarat, rep­re­sents our first major step toward growth in that direc­tion.

What led you to form a joint venture?

It isn’t easy for Euro­pean com­pa­nies to gain access to the impor­tant Indi­an mar­ket because the cus­tomers there pre­fer local prod­ucts. So it was clear to us from the begin­ning that we could only gain mar­ket entry by work­ing with a strong, local part­ner.

And that’s Aditya Birla?

Yes! With turnover of around EUR 50 bil­lion, Aditya Bir­la is one of the largest groups on the Indi­an mar­ket and is the country’s lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of porce­lain insu­la­tors. The busi­ness is high­ly diver­si­fied and boasts exten­sive tech­ni­cal exper­tise, plus wide cus­tomer reach. Fur­ther­more, Aditya Bir­la has very high qual­i­ty stan­dards and is held in high esteem both in Indi­an soci­ety and on inter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

What do you hope to gain from the joint venture?

We want to carve out an even stronger posi­tion for our­selves in large-scale bulk busi­ness in com­par­i­son to our major Chi­nese com­peti­tors and offer cus­tomers in this seg­ment high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts at com­pet­i­tive prices. This is a cru­cial fac­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Indi­an mar­ket, giv­en the sig­nif­i­cant increase in ener­gy demand it is show­ing.

And on the global market?

Our aim here is to be the top play­er in the glob­al mar­ket for hol­low com­pos­ite insu­la­tors and con­tin­ue to serve as a reli­able devel­op­ment part­ner for our cus­tomers when it comes to tech­nol­o­gy and qual­i­ty, even more so than we have been in the past. With this joint ven­ture, we are tak­ing a major step toward achiev­ing this goal, and this is allow­ing us to counter the aggres­sive com­pe­ti­tion we are fac­ing from oth­er parts of Asia.

“We now have all three man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies at our dis­pos­al — allow­ing us to cater to all pric­ing seg­ments.”

What makes you so confident about that?

We now have anoth­er unique sell­ing point on the mar­ket: In India, we are pro­duc­ing our hol­low com­pos­ite insu­la­tors with HTV injec­tion tech­nol­o­gy for the first time. This means that we com­bine all three shield­ing tech­nolo­gies under one roof at Pow­er Com­pos­ites, along with LSR injec­tion and HTV extru­sion. Nobody else can claim to do that. We can now cater to all require­ments in all glob­al mar­kets. As a full-ser­vice sup­pli­er, this makes us high­ly inter­est­ing to both nation­al as well as inter­na­tion­al cus­tomers.

And what does the customer get from this?

We can now tru­ly meet all demands and com­mu­ni­cate a very promis­ing mes­sage to cus­tomers worldwide—no mat­ter the require­ments or the sup­ply region, we have what it takes to accom­mo­date any­thing, and we’ll do so with out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal exper­tise and stan­dard­ized man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es.

Will your other sites also benefit from the joint venture?

Absolute­ly. Ulti­mate­ly, we are not just cater­ing to stan­dard bulk busi­ness via the Indi­an mar­ket. It is also a way of gain­ing new cus­tomers to whom we hope to sup­ply our pre­mi­um prod­ucts and sup­port over the long term. This makes our Indi­an site the per­fect addi­tion to our exist­ing port­fo­lio, not just an addi­tion­al means of access­ing the mar­ket.

“The joint ven­ture is a real mix of the core val­ues of both com­pa­nies. The tech­no­log­i­cal edge and the spe­cial­ist knowl­edge on both sides will cre­ate a vis­i­ble syn­er­gy. In this way, we will be able to cater to the demand for insu­la­tors in the ener­gy equip­ment indus­try and help Indi­an and inter­na­tion­al OEMs to improve their prod­uct port­fo­lio for trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work facil­i­ties around the world.”

San­jeev Sachdev, CEO of the joint ven­ture Aditya Bir­la Pow­er Com­pos­ites Lim­it­ed

What does the future look like for the joint venture?

Very positive—I have high hopes for it. The demand for hol­low com­pos­ite insu­la­tors is still expe­ri­enc­ing strong growth both on the Indi­an as well as the glob­al mar­ket. And a high lev­el of inter­est among our cus­tomers is already reflect­ing that. We are there­fore keen to fur­ther strength­en our pro­fes­sion­al and cor­dial part­ner­ship with Aditya Bir­la.

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YOUR CONTACT

If you have any ques­tions about shield­ing tech­nol­o­gy, please con­tact Mar­cus Hart­mann: M.Hartmann@reinhausen.com