LAPP India, a wholly owned subsidiary of the LAPP Group in Germany started operations in India 1996 with a manufacturing unit at Jigani near Bengaluru.

The company, a leading provider of products and solutions in the cable and connection technology area for the machine tool industry, later in 2012, set up its second facility in Pilukhedi, Bhopal to strengthen its base in the single core wires segment.The company showcased its range of products including OFLEX Connect, a customised cable assembly solution at Intec 2017, a five-day international industrial trade fair, which concluded here.

Excerpts from an interview with Marc Jarrault, Managing Director, LAPP India.

Can you share details about your facility in India

The unit at Jigani is the second largest manufacturing facility of the group with capacity to manufacture 60000 km of multi-core cables and 78000 km of single core wires per annum.We have invested around ₹165 million (2.1 million Euros) on this facility. The production area at Jigani was also doubled in 2014.In 2012, we set up the second manufacturing plant at Pilukhedi in Bhopal. The existing capacity of this plant is 1000 km of single core cable – daily – catering the building segment.

We also make 36000 km of multi core cables resulting in overall capacity increase of 60 per cent in multicore cables in addition to the existing 2.16 lakh km capacity in single core wires.Our total investment on the two manufacturing units amount to 5 million Euros.

What is your vision for India market?

We are targeting a turnover of ₹1000 cr by 2020.

We are looking to strengthen our customer base in our focus segments and increase our presence in retail from the current 5 cities to 20 in the next three years.We have a significant market share in the South and West. Going forward, we plan to gain foothold in the North.

And to reach out to more customers, we intend to set up more warehouses and build service points to service them better.

Challenges that the Indian market pose and your strategy to tide over them..

India is a challenging market, price sensitive and demands world class technologies at affordable pricing.

To meet this, we are starting to manufacture more and more products here with an exception of some specialised products.Another important challenge is the infrastructure, which is the key to ensuring that heavy duty products are moved from one place to another to ensure timely delivery. It is critical that as a country we lay more focus on developing road and rail infrastructure to fuel growth and ensure of transportation of goods from one place to another.

The government's decision on roll out of GST is further expected to ease the process of doing business and a step towards making India a global manufacturing hub.

On business potential..

Infrastructure, renewable energy, metro, ports, railways, metals and mining, automotive and automation power plants (nuclear and thermal) contributes to growth of India market.

Some of these industries have higher growth rates in certain cities compared to others due to cost advantage from raw material and manpower.LAPP group has a presence in each of these industries.

The Indian market is pegged to be growing at 10 per cent per annum and this is estimated to be around ₹24000 crore in low voltage cables and wires. We are aiming to capitalise on this and contribute to Indian growth story.

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