Rotofilt Engineers plans expansion

Ahmedabad based Rotofilt Engineers, players in the process equipment space especially catering to solid-liquid separation solutions, plans to invest Rs 3 crore along on adding new machine lines as well as Rs 1.5 crore on R&D operations to more than double its production value from a Rs 15 crore now to Rs 35 crore by 2012 fiscal.

It plans to also up its share of exports to around 70 per cent of net production from 50 per cent now. Rotofilt is looking at tapping Israel, US and Commenwealth of Independant States (CIS) countries in north Europe next fiscal. It now caters to Spain, Holland, Turkey, Bangladesh and some countries in Africa and the Gulf.

The company has tied up with Perry Process Equipment Ltd, UK, a dominant player in Europe for process equipment to market the range of used process equipment in the Indian sub-continent. Rotofilt will re-furbish used equipment that will be then up for sale with a six months warranty, informed K Makvana, managing director of the company.

"A lot of people now buy used equipments, but they seldom come with a warranty. Now this will be done in an organised way in India", he said adding that it was difficult to guess the net market size for such equipments. Rotofilt has already started trials.

The Rs10 crore company has managed funding from the Technology Development Board under the Ministry of Science &Technology for its Rs 3 crore expansion plan while its funding the R&D expansion from internal accruals.

"We currently produce around 40 capital equipment per annum and with the new machines getting added to our plant we are looking at tapping newer industry segments like heavy chemicals, mining & minerals and bulk drugs", Makvana said.

Rotofilt currently caters to chemicals, fertilizers, food processing and pharmaceutical industries with a 70 per cent market share in solid-liquid separation machinery in the food processing segment. It is hopeful of touching a turnover of Rs 15 crore by the end of this fiscal.