Industry Talk

For All Things Metal

Tridib Majumder, Managing Director, Quaker Houghton India and DMI Influencer 2022 shares his company’s journey, industry influence, and vision for growth.  

Company and Executive Profile

Tridib Majumder, Managing Director, Quaker Houghton India is a seasoned professional with more than three decades of experience spanning a variety of industries and cultures. His leadership and strategic planning abilities capitalize on existing and emerging opportunities and people development. He has a track record of successfully managing market entry, turnarounds, and consistent growth through people development. He is a Mechanical Engineer from NIT and an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur. 

Quaker Houghton has entered into a collaboration with SKF, the undisputed leader in bearing business to deliver circular use of oil enabling utilizing of its resources more efficiently by reducing the unsustainable linear of use of oil. The circular use of oil will also help reduce the industry’s environmental footprint through a reduction in CO2 emissions, lessen the amount of neat cutting oil purchased, and reduce handling and disposal costs whilst providing significant performance improvements. This collaboration would start in Europe and eventually extend globally.

SKF is a valued partner of Quaker Houghton, and it is always a common motivation for providing differential solutions and services to Quaker Houghton and SKF customers to improve their business. This collaboration builds on combined global expertise, a shared goal to improve the customer experience, and the intent to bring data-based Industry 4.0 offerings and more sustainable solutions to the market.  

Indian Machine Tools Industry: Vision  

The Indian Machine Tools Industry has seen the worst phase where it was down by more than 40 %  of its demand as compared to Pre-Covid Status. Estimates for 2020-21 show Rs 12000 cr of  Machine Tools consumption. I think it reached its rock bottom in the last two years of covid and we can only see an upward trend from here. Supply chain disruptions have also improved to a great extent and challenges due to semiconductor shortages have reduced. We see the manufacturing industry ramping up its production and looking forward to increasing its capacity. Many industries have shared their plans to increase in their Capex spending in buying new machines to meet this capacity increase. Logically we envisage many Machine Tools Manufacturers coming up with new manufacturing facilities to meet the increased demand for machines. Most of the Machine Tools manufacturers have healthy order bookings and we envisage to see this trend to continue for next 5 years resulting in a CAGR of 12-14 %,  the industry which is currently hovering at Rs 6000 cr in revenue is poised to go up to  Rs 10000 cr by 2023-24.

Our honorable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi has spoken about India becoming a USD 5 trillion economy by 2030. With this India’s GDP is poised to grow at 7-8 % over the next decade with large investments and growth expected in the manufacturing Industry. Indian Machine Tool industry would have to support this growth by gearing up with increased machine tool manufacturing capacity and new technology.

The opening of new sectors such as Aerospace and Defence will also bring a lot of opportunities along with the growing Automobile sector. The automotive sector is the biggest consumer of machine tools Industry is also poised to do extremely well in the next few years.  

Exports could be another opportunity for Indian Machine Tools Industry, particularly Latin America and South East Asia can be likely markets as they would be the next manufacturing hub along with India.

The Organization’s Vision  

Quaker Houghton is a global leader in industrial process fluid solutions. If anything is made of metal if it’s rolled, cut, drawn, or cast, Quaker Houghton is there, optimizing processes, reducing costs, and advancing safety and sustainability. and driving the progress. Quaker Houghton is the leader in the $13-billion global addressable market and we would like to maintain the leadership position in Industrial Fluid which includes fluids used by customers in the metalworking and metals sectors. Our position can be consolidated by reaching out to various markets where our presence is negligible, introducing technology products, partner with customers by taking up their challenges related to process fluid heads-on. In past, we combined various companies such as Houghton International- a leader in the metalworking segment, Norman Hay plc – a global specialty chemicals sealant, surface coating, and engineering group which have four divisions  Ultraseal – impregnation chemicals, impregnation equipment and die release products , SIFCO – electroplating and anodizing chemicals and equipment’s, Surface Technology- surface coating chemicals and  recently  Grindaix – who provide solutions for wide range of machining process .

Customer Intimacy model would be at our centre of decision making, our offer would be tailored to customer process and their needs, on-site support to our customers would be our commitment and  we would ensure fast response may it be delivery of material, formulation changes or sample analysis.  Quaker Houghton spend more than 3 % of its sales in R & D and would continue to do so. 

We are committed to providing sustainable solutions and have aligned our goal to UN charter for sustainability. Our four pillars a) Innovating Together for better tomorrow b) Empowering our colleagues and communities c) protect our planet  d) sourcing our Material responsibly  would help us to achieve goals to decrease carbon footprint in product consumed , decrease greenhouse gas emission in supply chain, decrease human hazards in product purchased ,  decrease waste and energy at QH Fluidcare locations and increase renewable and recyclable products. 

The Organization’s Contribution to Industry Growth

Industrial Process Fluids are the lifeblood of Machine Tools Industry. The various oils and chemicals go hand in hand with machines. Quaker Houghton is striving hard in R&D to develop and support the industry with sustainable products for new technology machines. Our products are REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) compliant and approved and recommend by almost all Aerospace manufacturers along with major Automotive OEMs. We have plans to collaborate with Machine Tool Manufacturers to provide a complete solution to these OEMs with new and approved technology product. Indian Machine Tools Industry would be growing at a faster pace with an increase in the consumption of process fluid, to address this opportunity Quaker Houghton has come up with new state-of-the-art  plant at Dahej in Gujarat. The site incorporated unique features in its design , such as high efficiency induction motors to reduce energy , a water condensation recovery systems  and waste water  treatment technology that supports Quaker Houghton ‘s environmental goals. Quaker Houghton would be fully equipped with the future requirements of chemicals and oils to the Indian Machine Tools Industry

https://home.quakerhoughton.com/