— V.K. Bajaj, Chief Operating Officer, Uniflex Cables Ltd
Uniflex Cables Ltd, a subsidiary of
Apar Industries, is a
leading name in the field of power and telecom cables.
Uniflex is known for introducing innovative cabling solutions
for both the domestic and international markets. In this
exclusive interaction,
V.K. Bajaj dwells on a number of
issues relating to his company and the power cables
industry. With increasing private enterprise in the power
sector, the power cables industry is poised for dynamic
growth, he feels. An interview by
Venugopal Pillai.
Private sector entities have started playing a prominent role in the field of power generation,
transmission and distribution. What impact do you see this having on the power cables industry?
The power sector—generation, transmission and distribution—so far had been in the hands of
state and Central government utilities and we have all seen that capacity utilizations have been
low, transmission losses (technical and due to pilferage) have been significantly high, and
distribution not as efficient as it should be. Much renewed effort has been made to improve the
performance in these sectors by restructuring of SEB's and results are improving.
Private sector entities are working hard by deploying better practices and better quality
products. The private sector procurement, especially of cables, is from reliable and qualityconscious
cable manufacturers with stricter inspection and warranty norms. This has certainly
helped good quality conscious manufacturers to offer quality products.
Leading cable manufacturers have certainly benefited by limiting competition to
manufacturers who have reliable manufacturing systems, use of quality raw materials and newer
design of cables.
How has Uniflex benefited after it became a subsidiary of Apar Industries?
Uniflex Cables has been an old and established player. However, during the jelly-filled telephone
cable (JFTC) boom, it had put all its resources on JFTC. When the demand of JFTC declined, it
landed up in a difficult financial situation. That is how Apar stepped in during mid-2008. Since then,
Apar has established a new management team, invested for capacity enhancement and capacity
debottlenecking and provided all assistance in working capital. Apar is also providing marketing
support for export market.
Please summarize some corporate objectives that you would like to see Uniflex Cables attaining
in the next 5-7 years?
Uniflex sales during last three years have grown exponentially from
100
crore to
300 crore in a short time. We expect to maintain high growth in
coming years by offering new products and increasing our exports. Apar
has plans to invest further in new cable products, which is expected to take
Uniflex sales to
1,000 crore in next five years.
What has been the market response to Uniflex's "anti-theft" cables
launched last year?
We have been exporting our anti-theft cables to countries in the African
region. In India, we are currently running a few pilot projects for private
distribution companies. Once these pilot projects are successfully
accepted, we will have good demand generated in India.
Over the past few years, we have noticed that leading
cable manufacturers in India are tying up with
multinationals for EHV cables. Does Uniflex have
plans in this direction?
The power cable market has lot of surplus
capacity worldwide. Since most of these
international cable manufacturers are facing
demand problems in their own countries,
many of them are trying to set up base in India
to be part of India's growing demand for
HV/EHV cables. We feel that the margins in
power cables are expected to remain under
pressure. Therefore, we are not too keen at
present to invest in EHV cable segment.
Over the years, have you noticed any change in the tendering and
procurement policies of state government utilities?
There is a growing pressure for bringing in transparency into procurement
process. The tendering and procurement policies are undergoing changes
with e-bidding and reverse auctions now being followed by several
utilities. It is certainly benefiting the utilities though it is putting pricing
pressures on cable manufacturers.
Please summarize the capacity expansion plans of Uniflex, in the field of
power and industrial cables , excluding telecom .
We have been gradually increasing our capacities in line with a fast
growth that we achieved from
100 crore to
300 crore in the last three
years. This has been so far achieved by de-bottlenecking and
modernization of equipment. There is still some room by following this
strategy and we have already created capacity up to
450 crore. We
are in the process to set up an Electron Beam Irradiation Curing for our
Elastomer cables besides having plans to enter automotive cables and
building wire segment. The capacity for anti-theft cables, aerial
bunched cables and speciality cables is planned for increase to achieve
our objective of
1,000 crore sales in the next five years.
You have been advocating the cause of fire survival cables to minimize the
risk of fire from electrical short circuit. Do you feel real estate developers
and other stakeholders are getting aware of the need of FS cables?
We were perhaps the first to get our fire survival building wire tested at
ERDA and introduced it in the urban building market. Unfortunately,
there are no statutory or regulatory directives for compulsory
use of such wires in the commercial segment. So we have
decided to remain low at present. We do not want to
be spending too much time on concept-selling as we
have many other priorities.
Speaking of industrial cables (non-power
related), which sectors would be major growth
drivers for Uniflex Cables?
Traditionally, only 50 per cent of the cables
are sold to utilities and power sector, the
remaining goes to infrastructure, railways,
shipping, steel, cement, sugar, petrochemical
and other sectors. The infrastructure, petrochem
and metro railway segment are the prime sectors that
are witnessing very high rate of growth. Uniflex intends
to make more inroads into these sectors. Uniflex has several
specialty products especially for steel and defence sector and will try
to improve position.
Do you see the Indian power cable industry getting globally competent?
How do you gauge the future for the Indian power cable industry in the
medium-to-long term?
The cable manufacturing technology is highly matured in India and is highly
competitive to take on the world. We have been able to export over
100
crore cables against stiff competition from Chinese and East European
block countries. In fact, it is observed that even in international tenders,
the competition is with other Indian companies. Availability of raw
materials, cheaper labour and good equipment has made the Indian cable
manufacturing very competitive.