BFW acquires turning business of Proteck Machinery

The acquisition would help the company to reach its target of Rs 1,600 crore turnover in 3 years

Bharat Fritz Werner (BFW), one of the flagship companies of Kolkata-based Rs 2,600 crore Kothari Group, has announced acquisition of the turning business of Chennai-based engineering firm Proteck Machinery, as part of its efforts to double the company's turnover to Rs 1,600 crore in next three years. The company refused to divulge the investment into the acquisition.

BFW, which is into machine tool industry for past several decades, has its presence in the milling machines business, which is 50 per cent of the machine cutting sector. In machine cutting almost 50 per cent of the market is milling machines, which is to cut the machine flat, the rest of the 50 per cent is of turning machines, which cuts the machines in a curve or more in a round shape.

"We have been present in the milling, but had only one technology of vertical cutting in turning machines. With the acquisition of the turning business from Proteck, we can address more product range and would help us in bigger application," said Ravi Raghavan, CEO, BFW. He added that almost 40 per cent of the machine tool industry is catered through imports at present and the company would look at import substitution for future growth.

In January, this year, the company has decided to look at a target to double its turnover from around Rs 800 crore at present to Rs 1,600 crore in next three years. It will be investing around Rs 100 crore in three years to reach the goal and the acquisition of the turning business was part of this plan. There might not be any acquisition in the next three years, as part of the plan and the company would be looking at internal operations and expansion to reach the goal, he said.

At present, it is manufacturing around 1,200 machines, a combination of standard machines and special purpose machines, a year. This would go up to 2,000 machines a day in next three years. The company has a goal to become one of the top 20 companies in the machine tools segment by 2020, said Raghavan.

BFW, which was incorporated in 1961, currently has more than 200 special variants in machine tools. There are more than 35,000 BFW products across the globe and these products find application in various industries such as automotive, defense, aerospace, die and mould. Its main manufacturing facility is located in Bengaluru and high technology machining centers are produced at it's subsidiary MATEC in Germany. The company also has a strategic marketing alliance with Spinner of Germany, it said.

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