Hindu Business Line dt 30/10/2010
Swiss grains processing technology major – Buhler is eyeing a Rs 1,000 crore-plus turnover from its Indian operations by 2014.
“For the current calendar year, we expect to do business of Rs 450 crore. This, we hope to more than double and cross Rs 1,000 crore in the next four years”, Mr Dipak Mane, Managing Director, Buhler (India) Pvt Ltd, told presspersons here on Friday.
More than half of the 1.8 billion Swiss Franc (Rs 8,100 crore) company's sales in India are from supply of rice milling and colour sorting plants. The rest is accounted for by flour and feed milling, die-casting, pasta, and chocolate plants.
From 10% to over 50%
“Since starting our operations here in 1991, we have installed over 200 complete rice mills, which covers engineering and supplying the entire basic plant and machinery for cleaning, de-stoning, hulling, whitening (bran removal) and polishing. This apart, we have supplied equipment for individual sections from whitening and polishing to grading and colour sorting,” noted Mr Mane.
Around 20 years back, hardly 10 per cent of the paddy produced in the country was being processed in modern mills, capable of handling at least five tonnes an hour. That proportion, according to Mr Mane, has now crossed 50 per cent, even as the country's (actually the world's) largest rice mill at Dhuri in Punjab, belonging to KRBL Ltd, has a capacity of 150 tonnes/hour.
“When we began, the industry standard for single milling lines was five tonnes/hour. Today, it is 8-10 tonnes/hour. From next year, we will be offering 15-20 tonnes/hour lines,” he said, adding that Buhler has a 25 per cent share in the domestic market for rice milling and colour sorting equipment.
Buhler also claims to have a 50 per cent share of the country's wheat flour milling plant market, which is, however, smaller in comparison to rice mills. Of the 75 million tonnes of wheat that is produced in the country, only about 15 million tonnes is processed in roller flour mills, with 60 tonnes/day or more capacity. The bulk, 80 per cent, is milled in ordinary chakkis or stone grinders.
The other area that Buhler is focussing on — following its recent global acquisition of Schmidt-Seeger, a Germany company — is grain warehousing technology. Schmidt-Seeger supplied the entire handling, drying and storage systems for Adani Agri Logistics's 6,30,000-tonne grain terminals, set up under a BOO (Build, Own, Operate) contract with the Food Corporation of India
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