Casting a bright future

Home
Technical Articles
Casting a bright future

Casting a bright future

Technical Articles
Apr 01,18

The castings industry is looking at achieving its uphill goals with the support of imminent demand from emerging sectors.

The castings industry is looking at achieving its uphill goals with the support of imminent demand from emerging sectors.

With the government initiatives, international investments, public private partnerships, domestic consumption and a huge labour pool, the manufacturing sector in India seems to move towards the government’s aim of achieving 25% GDP share by 2022. With the manufacturing sector observing growth, several other collateral sectors have started looking up to new opportunities. One of the deep rooted industries having its surge directly proportional to the manufacturing sector is the casting/foundry industry with a turnover of approximately $19 billion in India.

The whole set of applications where the Indian foundry industry is active includes defence, aerospace, earth moving, auto, tractor, railways, textile, cement, machine tools, sanitary, pipe fittings electrical, wind turbine generators, power machinery, pumps/valves, etc. The casting industry has certain major clusters known for catering specific end-use markets.

Coimbatore is the largest foundry cluster consisting of about 300 to 400 foundries focusing on steel castings, pump bodies and forging components with a sharp eye on technology and value-addition. Next is the Kolhapur cluster, focused on automotives. Belgaum and Shimoga in the south are also observing an upward exponential curve, while Rajkot is emerging as another cluster. While 5-10% of them are very large foundries, about 30% are mid-sized ones with an annual turnover of Rs 1 to 1.5 billion. The rest are small and micro units.

Casting in auto space

There are approx 5000 units out of which 90% can be classified as MSMEs. As the castings companies are undergoing a lot of technological upgradation in view of the advanced technologies being adopted by the automotive industry, many of the MSME units, with the current definition, are not able to take advantage of the government schemes specific for them.

The demand for metal casting industry is expected to be sustained till the next decade as auto, auto components and capital goods industry has come up with a layout to grow three folds in the respective period. The capital goods policy of the government would lead the sector to grow from $ 35 billion to $ 115 billion industry by 2025. On the other hand according to the Automotive Mission plan 2016-26, the auto sector would seem to grow 3.5 to 4 times of the current value of $ 74 billion to $ 260 billion to $ 300 billion thereby leading to the growth of the Indian casting industry.

Currently the automobile industry consumes approximately 32 percent of the castings from this sector, spawning critical parts like brake drums, axles and engine parts. But, with the government’s proposed policy of converting all vehicles to electric by 2030, the castings industry that supplies critical components for automotive engines will have to evolve in the future. The new EV technology will impact the castings players since many major castings parts used in the ICE powertrain will be replaced by the electric powertrain. The engine for one will be dispensed with and hence several moving parts will also be shelved.

New trends

The introduction of simulation-based castings is one of the key trends that will drive the growth of the die casting market, across the world, in the forthcoming years. The simulation-based casting process is used to produce components that are cost-effective, have high-precision, and are reliable. This casting process involves various benefits, one of which is that it ensures easy and accurate fault detection. Simulation-based manufacturing results in reduced wastage and operational costs. Additionally, they can also predict defects and their location easily, and more precisely than the conventional method.

With off road sector creating robust demand, GST procedure easing out, technological advancements changing the face of automotive sector and increasing number of infrastructure projects, the casting industry would take its deservedly positive strides in future.