FEMCO to be prominent Machine Tool Supplier in India by 2020
Far East Machinery Co Ltd (FEMCO) is a 65-year-old Taiwan-based company that specialises in manufacturing machines for heavy engineering sector. The company started its India operations in 2011 looking into the potential offered by Indian industry and is confident of long-term penetration in the Indian market. FEMCO commenced India operations with just two people and today has strength of 15 people who look after sales, application and service of the machines manufactured by the company. The company has been growing leaps and bounds in the country and is a name to reckon with among other machine manufacturers.
“We are very strong in manufacturing boring machines with Integrated Facing Head and Alloy Wheel Lathes. Last IMTEX, we displayed machine without automatic tool changer on Facing Head and during IMTEX 2015, we displayed the machine having automatic tool changer on Facing Head which is next level of our earlier machine. Our next technological development is to integrate pallet changing mechanism in our machines and hope to come up with that machine soon,” the Vice-President (Sales and Marketing) of FEMCO India, Mr BP Poddar said while speaking to CNCTimes during IMTEX 2015.
“The heavy engineering sector in India is in need of smaller machines than we manufacture. Our design department is working on that and we hope to come up with those machines before next IMTEX on 2017,” Mr Poddar said adding, the company’s sales strategy is through sales partners as well as direct sales.
“FEMCO is little bit concerned towards the market readiness to use multi-tasking machines that can carry out turning, milling and boring operations in one machine. People are using different machines for different operations, but now it is possible with FEMCO’s FT2 model to combine various Turning and Milling operations. This way customers can combine multiple process thereby increasing the quality and reducing the downtime. Our FT-2 machine can help reduce downtime and increase uptime by 70% for more profitability. At IMTEX 2015, we wanted to spread the message of this concept and we hope that people have understood the importance. We can sell more machines in India,” Mr Poddar said.
FEMCO has established a state-of-the-art technology centre at Pune where entire range of machines will be demonstrated. People can come and see the performance of the machines before making purchasing decisions. “Seeing is believing and this has been our strategy. We can’t take every buyer to Taiwan. So to make them understand our machine better, we have set up this technology centre,” he said.
On the current status of Indian manufacturing sector, Mr Poddar said that the market scenario is changing rapidly due to globalisation. “People are ready to accept new challenges and technologies. The process is bit slower. Even Indian manufacturers are upgrading themselves so as to meet the global standards and challenges. There are barriers, but the industry-friendly policies of the Union government will definitely boost the manufacturing sector in India,” the official hoped.
Stating that Indian market is very much price sensitive like any other global market, Mr Poddar said that the cost of money because of interest rate is very high and customers are concerned about capital investment. “For us, next 5-10 years are very important as during that period, FEMCO will be a prominent company in India catering to the heavy engineering sector. The change in our strategy is visible and we hope to meet our desired goal by 2020,” Mr Poddar signed off.