In a recent conference organised in Pune, Sandvik Asia announced its plans to strengthen its presence in India.

Sandvik is set to achieve world class performance in value creation through higher growth and profitability and thereby make the company even more attractive for customers, employees and shareholders. The focus is on increasing profitability and strengthening position in attractive markets and segments. To succeed with the new strategic direction and to increase transparency and operational focus,  the organisation has plans to go forth with defining a concrete growth path for India, leveraging India as a premium research and development (R&D) and innovation centre, and explore a possibility of expanding the manufacturing base in India.

?Sandvik in India is a fast-growing and developing market. Having said this, we need to strengthen this position further and also improve in some areas to be world class in all our businesses. Sandvik will always have ambitious targets but there also has to be strong commitment to reaching these targets. Our aim is to act suitably and make sure that we allocate resources and capital in the right places where we get the best return,? said Ajay Sambrani, Country Manager, Sandvik Asia. Speaking on the future plans of the company, Sambrani said, ?We have evolved a mid-term strategy until 2015 and our ambition is to take the overall sales to Rs 7,000 crore.?

?Sandvik is stepping up its level of ambition in India. There are a lot of opportunities here and we want to grow faster than we have in the past. I firmly believe that India will be among the top five markets globally,? said Andy Taylor, acting President, Sandvik Construction.

Elaborating on the construction sector, Raghavan Ramaswamy, President, Sandvik Construction, said, ?In construction, we are quite busy as we have had a decent growth of 12-15 per cent compared to last year. In a not so growing market, to have a growth of this magnitude, we have done reasonably well. Of course there is room for development and we want more and for 2013 we are looking at 20-27 per cent, higher than what we are going to close this year.?

According to him, Sandvik will be focusing on the Indian market. ?The Indian market so far has been on a very lower run in capacity and productivity because the customers are at level 2 and level 3 who are very specific to particular projects. They are not into long term bigger capacity projects. But we are looking at the consolidation that is taking place where higher capacity equipment will be required. Today majority are 200-300 TPH plant which is not very big in the global atmosphere. But we see a shift towards bigger and better and that is where Sandvik play a major role. Even in 200-300 TPH, we provide tailor-made solution,? Raghavan said.

The Sandvik group has also identified India as a big base for research and development (R&D). The group has already set up one of its R&D centres outside Sweden, in Pune.


Sandvik plans to go forth with defining a concrete growth path for India, leveraging India as a premium R&D and innovation centre, and explore a possibility of expanding the manufacturing base in India.