— Jayesh Shah, Director,
Citizen Metalloys Ltd
Citizen Metalloys is amongst the largest manufacturers and
exporters of a range of copper products used in the electrical
equipment industry.
Jayesh Shah talks to
Electrical Monitor about
his company’s business and future plans. Shah explains how a
recent shift from generic products to customized products has
added significant business value. Apart from doubling production
over the next few years, Citizen is also targeting higher exports
revenue, notes Shah.
At the outset, tell us about the various copper products made by
Citizen Metalloys.
We manufacture copper flats, rods, sections and anodes.
These have been our regular products. Now, we have started
developing copper components as per customer as per
customer requirements. In present scenario, customer
requires customized and finished products that they can
directly use in assembling or manufacturing of their products.
Some of the application industries are manufacturers of
switchgear, electrical control panel, transformers, bushings,
etc.
Tell us about your current manufacturing plant at Chhatral in
terms of current capacity, future expansions, etc.
Our current manufacturing plant at Chhatral in Gujarat has
capacity of 3000 tonnes per annum. Talking about our future
expansion, we are focusing on expanding horizontally in terms
of increasing the product range rather than pursuing volume
expansions. We are providing copper products with value
addition by carrying out in-house operations such as
machining, bending, punching, cutting, drilling, sleeving,
forming, forging, plating etc.
The electrical equipment industry appears to be in a phase of
recession. What is your view?
Yes, we can perceive the recession or downfall in the electrical
equipment industry. In our view, the actual demand in the
market is high but due to liquidity problems in the market, this
segment is facing a slowdown. We feel that it is a short-term
problem and will be overcome soon. The power sector is
tremendously growing day-by-day.
International copper prices are sometimes erratic. How does
this impact your raw material purchase?
Copper prices are always unstable as a consequence of ups and
downs in Eurozone, US economy fluctuation and sometimes
demand-supply ratios. But it doesn’t make major impact on our
raw material purchase, because we always purchase our raw
material in accordance with our sales orders.
Do you think that availability of copper cathodes has improved after the setting up domestic capacity by Vedanta, Birla Copper
etc.
Copper cathode manufacturers like Vedanta, Birla Copper and
Hindustan Copper have improved the availability by setting up
domestic capacity and many local warehouses. However,
because of the government tax and duties structure, we still
have to import our raw material.
Please tell us about the exports business of Citizen Metalloys.
We started our exports with two countries Sri Lanka and UAE.
In a very short span of time, we have been able to expand our
exports to more than 35 countries worldwide. Now we are
government-recognized export house and our present export
turnover is around 25 per cent of total turnover. We are looking
forward to capture more export market in near future.
Please summarize your growth plans for Citizen Metalloys for
the medium term.In terms of growth, for the coming 3 to 5 years, we are
foreseeing to double our production and increase our product
range as well. To achieve these, we are planning to automate
most of the production facilities and adopt new marketing
strategies which will help us to locate and capture the
untapped potential of the market.