In an exclusive chat with Claus from Food Infotech, Palanisamy Lakshman, Vice President, Sales & Marketing (Industry & Automation Solutions), Bonfiglioli Transmissions Pvt. Ltd. discussed about the recent solutions introduced by the company for the F&B Industry and how they have been helping their clients improve productivity in their operations by ensuring significant energy and cost savings, including sharing more details on the challenges faced by food manufacturers in integrating automation into their production operations, as well as their future plans.
Read: August Issue of Food Infotech Magazine.
Edited Excerpts Below:
Could you please start by introducing a little about Bonfiglioli with us?
We, Bonfiglioli are a 67-year-old family-run Italian company and Pioneer and Market Leader in Power transmission & Power Electronics Solution Providers with a global presence across 80 countries. Having over 25 years of presence in India with 4 manufacturing facilities, we cater to market with 12 branches & wide Sales Partner Network across the country in addition to extensive Service network to create Best Customer Experience. We continue to create value to our customers in many industries that include Food and Beverage, Textile, Material Handling and logistics, Construction, Crane, Steel, Metal, Cement, Water & Wastewater Treatment Industry, etc.
We offer a diverse range of Products and solutions for various types of applications in the F&B Industry. Further, we have been developing customized solutions for many challenging applications for the F&B Industry. Some of the biggest manufacturing lines in the world are powered by at least one of our solutions, whether it is a final drive, gearbox, gearmotor or inverter.
Presently, what solutions have you introduced in the recent past and what problems do they aim to solve for the food manufacturers?
When it comes to the F&B Industry, productivity and energy efficiency are the most important topics today. As part of decarbonization journey in India, most businesses have started implementing Energy Efficiency solutions to reduce carbon footprint in their operations in addition to High Performance, Uptime with Low cost of ownership.
We offer complete solutions with extensive Application knowledge and expertise to Complex Application with our High-Performance Active Cube series Inverter which can run PM Servo Motors and Standard Induction Motors and eliminate motion controlle0s, Agile Inverter Series with Energy Saving features, IE3 Motors, Synchronous Reluctance IE4 Motors, High efficiency Co-Axial AS, C, CP range of Gear Motors. These products are designed for High Reliability and High Performance with Low maintenance and Service Cost. These Inverters are manufactured at our Bonfiglioli Vectron Germany Factory. We are in the Process of launching next Gen Inverter Series- AXIA shortly in India.
How has automation transformed food production in the Food Processing Industry? Further, how is your company helping your clients improve their productivity as well as save on production costs?
Today, Productivity is a key factor to be competitive in this market and Large Part of Farm and Food Products are not utilized for consumption, due to lack of Automation, Storage and Logistics.
We offer our solutions as a complete package to our customers designed to speed up productivity, increase uptime and offer Energy efficiency and reduce carbon footprint. We are working towards reducing the total cost of ownership for our clients. Our gear boxes are designed for Longer Life >8-10 years, Lowest cost of Ownership, considering normal working conditions.
We offer various Value Added Services like Site audit, Training our customers, Life Cycle Services to ensure Low cost of ownership and Maximized uptime and working on new monitoring services as well.
Your views on the performance of the Indian Market this year and your predictions for the coming year.
When you take the case of Asian markets like India and China, I am definitely of the opinion that India is a huge market for us and we expect India to soon emerge as a global manufacturing hub & slated to become one of the Top 5 global factories in the next decade. Nowadays, we have been hearing from most OEMs that they have started undertaking exports to other countries. This is an indicator of the tremendous business potential in India to achieve strong growth in the export markets. Further, going by our current performance, I believe that our company would be in a position to log strong double digit growth Year on Year.
What are some of the challenges faced by businesses in the F&B Industry when it comes to integrating automation in their production operations and how do you plan to deal with the same?
When we look at the F&B Industry, it includes small, mid-sized and large businesses. While some of the businesses are organized, there are numerous players in the market that are unorganized and operating at a low cost point.
We, as Energy Efficiency Solution Providers continue to increase the awareness of ROI on Energy efficiency Investment, Productivity and Uptime Improvement and we could witness a strong demand for premium products by many businesses that would help them improve production efficiency and productivity in their operations.
Some businesses would settle for low-cost automation as it entails a huge capital expenditure and willing to compromise on energy efficiency and productivity and this is one of our biggest challenges.
Please let us know a little on some of the recent technologies developed by your company.
In addition to developing products with High Reliability, Performance and Energy Efficiency, we are working to offer Lower Life Cycle Cost of Products for our customers and enhance the Product life with automation interventions. We are working to offer our IoT solution through two service levels namely condition monitoring and predictive maintenance.
Through this solution, Product Performance can be monitored and data is transmitted to the cloud where the data can be processed and displayed in the dashboards. Our customers would be alerted in the event of any breakdown that is likely to happen, including keeping them informed of what is happening in the entire production line. Through our condition-based monitoring and predictive maintenance services, our solutions can keep the customer informed in advance and take up preventive maintenance.
Can you let us know your company’s USP?
Bonfiglioli’ s USP is that we quickly adapt to the changing requirements of the market. We offer the Best Customer Experience and support to our customers to select suitable solution for meeting their application needs from our wide range of Power Transmission and Power Electronics Products and ensure Lower Life Cycle of the Product though our Strong Application, Engineering, Sales and Service Specialists. Our service delivery has always been one of the best in the industry and we have not only been able to offer 24×7 service support for our customers, but also able to do the uptime within a shorter time period of 48 hours.
Do you have plans to target more markets in the coming year?
Presently, we see India as a big market for us and we are looking beyond Tier 1 cities and moving closer towards customers in Tier 2 cities with our solutions, as they have evolved over the past 2 decades, including opening branches in some of these cities. We have added Sales and Service offices in Jaipur, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Hubli and Kolhapur, apart from our Service centers across India. We will increase our offering in Power Electronics Drives, Servo Solutions to the market in the coming months to cater to various sectors.
We also understand the importance of demonstrating the value that we can bring to the customer through our solutions, particularly in these cities. Today, Indian businesses are not being driven by low costs of ownership, but the value that they can obtain from the solutions that are being offered to them. Hence, I would state that Bonfiglioli is one such brand that can offer the businesses the value for their money.
Finally, please let us know your future plans.
Bonfiglioli India is expanding with a dedicated R&D and Engineering Centre to address India and Global Markets, in addition to making investments in High Value Machineries for new Product Manufacturing. In 2024, we are investing in a Large Greenfield Project in Chennai for adding our Portfolio offering. We have already made investments in 2023 in building a State-of-the-Art World Class Facility at Pune to be closer to the customer and we will continue to expand the Pune Campus in 2025-26 once we complete the Chennai Campus Project. We want to stay invested in India for a long time and are looking to create value for our customers through our solutions.
