For Eaton, a global power management technology leader, India is a major market and forms a key part of its overall business strategy. With over 5,500 employees, seven manufacturing sites, presence in 18 key locations, and two decades of proven capabilities & customer engagements, Eaton is uniquely positioned to play a distinct part in India’s new growth story. The Eaton India Innovation Center, located at Magarpatta City in Pune, with its more than 1500 strong engineering workforce is driving cutting-edge R&D projects for all of Eaton’s global businesses. In this interview, Soami Das, General Manager – Application Engineering & Market Development, Eaton, highlights emerging trends in hydraulics industry and growth for the company’s hydraulic business.

 

What are the major categories of applications that hydraulics products manufactured by Eaton in India go into? 

A complete hydraulic systems solution provider, Eaton in India manufactures and markets a wide range of competitive power and motion control offerings and trades in a variety of hydraulic and fluid conveyance products practically for both mobile and stationary segments.

In the mobile segment, through a host of innovative technologies and industry leading brands of pumps, valves, steering units, hoses and fittings, hydrostatic transmissions, motors, etc, Eaton offers proven solutions to key industries such as agriculture, construction, mining, material handling and transportation.

 

In the stationary segment, Eaton’s pumps, valves, motors, hoses, fittings, filters, cylinders, industrial clutches and brakes, etc power some of the critical systems and solutions for the machinery, processing, bulk material handling, healthcare, alternate energy and oil & gas industries. What really differentiates us is our capability to design and manufacture hydraulic power units as well.

 

How is the demand for your various hydraulic products? 

In the past couple of years, we are witnessing significant growth in two of our most critical market segments namely agriculture and construction. Our wide range of products and solutions catered to diversified markets in both mobile and stationary segments. Few of our most selling hydraulic offerings are piston pumps, gear pumps, steering control units, orbitrol motors, directional valves, industrial cylinders and wide range of fluid conveyance products.  

 

How is the hydraulics industry doing in India at present? Of the two applications of hydraulics – mobile and industrial – which is experiencing faster growth & why? 

Mobile segment is seeing a growth of 20 to 30 per cent compared to last year and we expect this growth to sustain for at least next couple of years, keeping in view the various infrastructure related projects launched by government. Further, all mobile equipment OEMs are indicating similar sentiments and also are investing in production expansion.

 

What are the emerging trends in hydraulics industry? 

The focus is definitely on efficiency, cost of ownership, reliability, downtime reduction, ease of operation and machines designed to meet the safety and environmental regulations. And all this is leading to adoption of piston products, electronics/ electrohydraulic and digital technologies and we also see end users adopting the same, which was not the scenario say five years back.

 

Going forward, how do you intend to grow your hydraulic business? 

Our focus is to offer Indian OEMs the latest hydraulic technology to help them make their machines smarter and more efficient and we are confident that with safety and environment regulations becoming more stringent day by day, it will help Eaton and the leading manufacturers grow in Indian market. Further, with Eaton’s expanding manufacturing footprint and a state-of-the-art Innovation Center in India we are well positioned for sustained technology led growth. Besides, Eaton’s continued commitment to localisation of key products for the Indian market will create newer avenues of growth.