Ahlstrom india eyes 25% growth in sales

Invests 42 million euro for first plant at Mundra

Ahlstrom Fibercomposites India Private Limited(AFIPL), the 100 per cent subsidiary of Finland based diversified Ahlstrom Group, sees a 25 per cent rise in sales with the setting up of its new manufacturing facility for medical fabric in the Mundra Special Economic Zone(SEZ).

The new facility with an investment of 42 million euros was inaugurated yesterday and has a capacity of 12,000 tonne per annum(tpa). Rahul Dharmadhikari, managing director, AFIPL said "We will export 80 per cent of the production and the rest would be for the domestic market.Currently, the size of non-woven fabric market in India is around 1,500-2,000 tpa and it is growing at a 20 per cent rate".

The average price of the nonwoven medical fabric in the international market is around $3.5-4 per tonne.

The Mundra plant is Ahlstrom's first manufacturing facility in India and one of the biggest in Asia. The company has a 50 per cent market share of nonwoven medical fabric that is used in diapers, disposable medical masks among others, and has been operating in the country since 2006-07 when it opened a sales office.

"The potential for the Indian market is huge, around the size of the US market. We expect it to grow 10 times in the coming three to five years as the penetration of anti-infective medical fabric is still very low at only 5 per cent in the country", Dharmadhikari said. The company would then look forward to roping in partners for contract manufacturing as 80 per cent of the production from the SEZ would be for exports, he added.

Currently, Asia contributes to around 10 per cent of Ahlstrom Group's global turnover, and India has a minor share.

While he did not give out the Group's net sales figures, Dharmadhikari said that the company is bullish on India and China and aims to take the Asian contribution to over 25 per cent in the next three to five years.

The global market size for nonwoven medical fabric is around 200,000 tpa.