India: Chiorino belting solutions offer the most flexibility and energy savings to users

Rendezvous

India: Chiorino belting solutions offer the most flexibility and energy savings to users

How does Chiorino find the Indian market? In which segment of the industry do you witness good potential? How do you perceive competition in this market?

Indian market is one of the first priority markets for Chiorino. That is the reason Chiorino has decided to have its own operation in Goa which includes fabrication, technical support, marketing and sales. Here the main market is actually textile, which we divide into spinning and textile printing. Secondly, India is also known as a very important and interesting market for food and food processing sector.

This is one of the reasons why we decided to have our headquarters and production base here. There is also good market for paper printing and packaging in India. I would say, these are the main industries at the moment we are focusing with our operation at Goa. We have established a joint venture company Franstek Belts Pvt Ltd, headquartered in Goa, and headed by Avinash Pai.

How do you perceive competition in the Indian textile market?

Competition in India is very tough and all foreign belt manufacturers have a presence in India. It is important to offer the right product quality at the right price, provide excellent service and offer additional value to our customers. Our main target is to offer eco-friendly products and to support our customers in saving energy. Chiorino's innovative new solution for customers could save more energy than competitors' solutions. For example, our Green Tech Polyester power transmission belts are by far the most flexible in the market, and offers immense savings in energy.

What is your synergy with Naren?

A foreign company cannot serve directly to a large market like India and therefore we are selling through a network of dealers all over India. For South India, Franstek has appointed Naren Textile Engineers India Pvt. Ltd, which is distributing and selling our products in this market and we have other distributors for other areas.

What are the targets you have set for the Indian market?

Chiorino has sold power transmission belts, conveyor belts to the Indian markets for decades but not with a very strong focus. Now, our target is to make the Chiorino brand name more popular and known as a European supplier and solution provider, with focus on high quality, high reliability and after sales services with technical support. Our target is to become a major player in the belting business in India.

What would be your strategy?

Our strategy, as I mentioned before, is to focus on providing added value to the customers. Belting industry is not a very fast moving industry like electronics where manufactures spring out new products every few months. Belting business is little bit conservative and slower. Our strategy is to provide additional value in terms of energy savings which is better than any other competitor's products, to increase the service life of the product and reduce operational cost of the local end-users, say, a spinning mill. At the same time, we provide excellent technical service, in order to select the best solutions. These are the three pillars around which our strategy is built for the Indian market.

What is the technological development trend in this segment?

The main issue today is the reliability of the product. A belt looks quite simple and people sometimes perceive it as a commodity. But actually it is not, especially, in case of the textile industry. A ring spinning frame or a twisting machine will not run if the belt is not there or if the belt breaks. The whole production will stop. One may have a very high-end machine from the best manufacturer but if the belt does not perform according to the expectations, the whole machine will be useless. Thus, we focus on quality, reliability and to emphasize again, energy-saving solutions.

How was the response for Chiorino at ITMA Asia exhibition? Were you able to get enough response from the Indian market?

The response was excellent. Of course, majority of the visitors there came from the local markets in China but we had about 15-20% visitors from India. We perceive this as a great success.

South Asia based manufacturers always face issues with energy shortages. How Chiorino belts can assist the manufacturers here?

Our concept is not limited to any one market or region. Be it India, Bangladesh, China, Europe or any part of the world, energy efficiency and savings is always a big issue for manufacturers. Therefore, Chiorino new generation of belts can help customers' energy saving strategy and benefit from excellent after sales and technical support.