The German Engineering Federation (VDMA), the largest industry branch association in Europe exported textile machinery worth about 1.8 billion euros coming from 118 member companies of all textile branches, some of them leaders in the world market.
With a 118 years long history, this non-profit association has 500 employees worldwide and consists of 3,100 member companies active in 39 engineering sectors.
In India, VDMA extended its services with nodal office located at Kolkata and regional offices at New Delhi/Noida and Bangalore. The Indian team assists the German member companies as a “bridge-head” between the German and the Indian industry and to foster Indo-German trade in the engineering sector.
The Textile Machinery Association represents one of the top performance branches within Germany’s mechanical engineering industry. The main activities of the Association in supporting its members are economical and technical lobbying for the branch, exchange of experience and services like observation of important markets, reports on the situation of world-wide textile industries, set-up of statistics, active support in decisions about trade fairs, regular newsletters to the member companies as well as public relations. In the technical field, the emphasis is laid on information about legal regulations regarding machine safety, standardization and industry-joint research and development.
In 2009, out of approximately euros 13.3 billion of machinery imported by India, Germany’s share was 18% with total exports to the tune of 161 million euros. Till the 3rd quarter of 2010 machinery worth 120 million euros had been exported to India. “With the Indian economic and industrial scenario on healthy path of recovery, we are sure that the demand for German machinery would increase in coming years,” says Sumit Sharma, Regional Manager, VDMA. Significantly, Asia represents a major growth area for German technology with euro 1.058 billion worth of exports and growth of 46.2%.
“We find increased interest of German machinery manufacturers to have a presence in India. They are looking for possibility of setting up manufacturing units in India or forming joint ventures with reputed Indian companies. Further we are hopeful that in the near future India would develop as an important outsourcing hub for the German industry. However for this, it is necessary that the Indian manufacturers improve on quality and productivity,” says Sumit.
Spinning machinery remains the sector with highest export volumes for German textile machinery in India followed by finishing machinery at 24 million euros and knitting and hosiery machines at 18 million euros. “Spinning and finishing machinery will continue to remain areas where Germany will see further growth followed by knitting and hosiery machines,” says Sumit.
China is today a major competitor of German machines and VDMA feels that it calls for serious concern that the prices of Chinese products are kept intentionally low to gain a market entry. The other concern is the low quality and poor metallurgy offered which poses serious safety hazards. VDMA is actively pursuing “Choose Original” campaign to highlight benefits of investing in original and quality products that have a better price to performance ratio over a longer period of time.
One of the latest areas of concentration for German technology is technical textiles, as the prospects of growth in India are excellent. “Among the various fields of technical textiles, geotextiles, textiles for the automotive industry as well as for health care and medical applications are major growing applications in India among others,” says Sumit. The market size of technical textiles is expected to grow at a rate of 11% per annum to reach Rs. 66,414 crore by 2012. Whether a textile producer can benefit from this market potential or not depends – among other factors – on the right technology in the production of technical fabrics as well as in the finishing process of technical textiles.
Last year VDMA organized the Symposium “German Technology for Indian Technical Textiles” in New Delhi and Mumbai where 18 leading machinery manufacturers from Germany held presentations on technical textile machinery. “Various governmental measures have already been taken and will be initiated to facilitate the re-orientation of the Indian technical textile industry. However, from the VDMA point of view there are still obstacles to overcome. The market development of technical textiles in India still has to be intensified. One example is the lack of regulations and standards (e.g. in the area of infrastructure, health care) which provides the ground for further use and sustainable growth of technical textiles. So far, the use of geotextiles example is not mandatory in India which, if incorporated, might lead to a spurt of investments in this important field of technical textiles,” concludes Sumit.
