Mangalyaan, India’s maiden mission to Mars, has placed India within the elite group of countries to reach Mars. Indian subsidiary of Swedish organisation Trelleborg AB has created a history by being the sealing partner for the Mars Orbiter. Continuing its legacy of innovation, the company is developing breakthrough solutions for earthmoving and construction equipment (E&CE) also. In an interview with B2B Purchase, Ranjan Sen, Managing Director of Trelleborg Sealing Solutions (India) elaborates the same.

Could you brief us on your sealing solutions?
Trelleborg Sealing Solutions is one of the world’s leading players having a diverse range of products. We operate in more than 90 countries, having 40 manufacturing locations across the globe. We have a wide range of products typically into hydraulic cylinders and rotary seals. When it comes to hydraulic seals in the reciprocating cylinders, we offer the whole kit combining wiper, scrapper, U-Cup, piston seals etc. In the rotary segment, we offer cassette seals, radial oil seal and radial shaft seals etc. So from our whole range of products, we can offer a customer, end-to-end solutions for cylinders.

You are one of the major players in hydraulic sealing business. What gives you the competitive edge?
In case of an excavator, it lifts 100 tonnes of load and the entire load is lifted with the help of hydraulics. So if there is a leakage in the seal, then it will just not perform. And no one can take the risk of machine downtime considering the applications of capital equipment like excavators. We offer highly customised solutions to meet the particular demand of our customers keeping the type of applications and operations of equipment in mind. Today, when it comes to hydraulic sealing solutions market, we have the highest market share in construction industry.

Can you brief about your OEM tie-ups in the E&CE domain?
Though we do not have any specific tie-up with any OEM, we supply to almost all the OEMs of E&CE across the world. Caterpillar, JCB, Komatsu, Wipro – are all our customers.

Tell us about your manufacturing facility in India.
We have a manufacturing facility in Bengaluru to develop, manufacture and supply high-performance sealing solutions for aircrafts, off-highway equipment, trucks, passenger cars, as well as for industrial applications. The facility caters to the customers in the whole world and gradually becoming a manufacturing hub for the Asian markets.

How do you look at OEM market scenario at present?
At this point of time the OEM market scenario in India is not that strong. But I think the situation is better than the past year and going forward it is going to be a strong future driven by infrastructure development. Once the infrastructure picks up, it will have cascading impact over other sectors and we are bound to have a very strong growth.

Though the industry was not doing well, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions has been able to achieve significant growth steered by our focus on innovation. We had the best year last year and we are confident of beating the same this year.

Apart from infrastructure, what are the other sectors you are serving?
How do you see the opportunities in other sectors?In India, we serve agriculture, off-highway, aerospace, automotive, commercial vehicle and general engineering industries apart from infrastructure segment. Traditionally agriculture is the biggest market for us and last two years agriculture market has not done well. Now our biggest market is aerospace as we work in good traction with the Indian Space Research Organisation after the Mangalyaan mission where our seals were used. Now we are executing some big ticket and prestigious projects for them.

How do you see your organisation in regards with the innovation?
Trelleborg Sealing Solutions stands for innovation. Our innovations are driven both from the market requirement as well as from the engineering requirement. On product innovation, we have designed mechanical face seals which are specifically engineered for rotating applications in extremely tough environments where they withstand severe wear and prevent ingress from harsh and abrasive external media. This is being promoted for the Indian industry as we feel that the market is maturing to a scale to use such seals or materials. We have also innovated high versatile compounds namely M12 and Z82 which can work in a variety of fluids, and under different application temperatures. On service innovation we are one of the firsts to use IT like apps is sales, ability to connect engineers on the e-platform. These innovations of course set us apart from other sealing suppliers in the country.