Indian customers are catering to global markets and are moving away from the earlier “price only matters” buying process.

How does your range of products enhance the efficiency and life of equipment?
Trelleborg’s business concept is to seal damp and protect critical applications in a demanding environment. Our customers are constantly innovating their products for harsher, tougher conditions. Therefore, it is not surprising that the core of Trelleborg’s product development strategy lies in innovating engineered polymer solutions that meet customer-specific requirements for specific functional properties. The majority of Trelleborg’s innovation work in applied development takes place in close collaboration with our customers. Projects are conducted focusing on material sciences of polymers and other materials, as well as the actual design of products and solutions for the application. Finally, the purpose of all these is to improve business factors – productivity, costs, sales and profitability and sustainability for our customers.

How is your range of sealing solutions unique in comparison with the other players in the industry?
Trelleborg brand stands for product quality, innovation and performance, which comes from our core values. The material expertise and the technological advancement that we offer to the customers are unmatched and this helps them upgrade the performance of their equipment too. We are a solution partner who works with them right from the concept to design and till the project success stage.

Your business is invariably related to the manufacturing sector; do you believe that the policy implemented by the government has helped the sector to grow?
There is no doubt that the government’s policies are on the right track. We have seen successive years of strong growth in the manufacturing sector in the last 5 years and this would not have been possible without a proactive government policy and framework. Initiatives, like Make in India, the movement towards E-mobility, improving ease of doing business, are all steps in the right direction. In the short term, although 2019 has been a difficult year to deal with, we are confident that this phase will pass over soon, and we shall again be chasing serious growth.

Who are your key customers?
Seals are used virtually in every equipment. Therefore, most of the major OEMs and their Tier 1 and 2 suppliers are our customers. We were a proud sealing partner of Chandrayaan 2 this year; big names like Airbus and Boeing also use our products for critical applications. In the off-highway segment, our customers include all the major players in the sector- be it JCB, John Deere, CNH, Hitachi, L&T, Komatsu, Volvo, Escorts construction- and their key Tier1s like Wipro to name a few! Increasing usage of polymers is also allowing us to expand our customer base into newer areas such as food and pharma, healthcare and medical, oil and gas, water and sanitation, filtration equipment etc.

What strategies are enabling you to maintain cost competitiveness as cutting edge in the present scenario?
We operate in the performance-oriented market more than in the price-oriented one. Today, many of the Indian customers are catering to global markets and are moving away from the earlier “price only matters” buying process. We also see them rapidly embracing a culture of appreciation of robust technology at an affordable price. Trelleborg, with its over 100 years’ experience is best suited to fulfill the need. This is what makes us stay ahead of our competitors.

We have invested in manufacturing set up for PTFE, Elastomer and Metal products to assist our customers locally. We are also working on the expansion of our manufacturing facilities in India, Denmark, USA, and China with products that support our core industries.

Ranjan Sen, Managing Director, Trelleborg India Pvt Ltd.