The machine tool industry in 2018-19 showed a good stride. Last two years were not good, for the economic reasons and secondly the pandemic-led drop. Today, after 2 years of distress, the machine tool industry is hoping a better future. New market avenues have opened up such as aerospace and defence.

Rajesh Bhandari, Senior Managing Director, Gates India, believes there is a positive sentiment in the machine tool industry as the manufacturing is poised to grow and India aims to achieve 25 per cent of GDP from manufacturing. He stated that with growth in manufacturing, it will eventually contribute to growth of machine tools.

He was speaking at Industrial Products Finder (IPF) Virtual Roundtable on Machine Tools titled – “How to Increase Machine Tools Productivity?”.

Speaking about the transformations in the machine tool industry, Bhandari adds, “The machine tool industry is one of the sectors that has higher rates of adoptions. The digitalization is also increasing in the sector.”

Future prospect
It is a given fact that the automotive industry is going through trends like lightweighting and Electric Vehicles (EVs). With these two trends, the demand for machine tools will have to move to other industries as number of components involved will come down with EV growth. He explains, “With EVs coming in, the moving parts in a vehicle will drastically come down. More dependency will exert more pressure. Meanwhile, diversifying in aerospace and construction can help create better market.”  

“Diversifying your portfolio can really help machine tool industry to do away with dependency on one industry (automotive). Further, getting into long term contracts or establishing such agreements will play a big role and bring more stability in the operations of these companies,” he points out.

“There is a positive sentiment in the industry. The last six months of the fiscal 2020-21 were better, and we are in the second month of new fiscal where this growth is about to stay. Businesses in India have regrouped themselves to meet demand from the industries.”