Rockwell Automation Angles For 25% Revenue Growth

Rockwell Automation India is expecting a 20-25 per cent jump in revenues from contracts for maintenance, designing and consultancy services from manufacturing companies during the current financial year.

This contribution is expected to grow further with more and more of its multinational clients who are starting manufacturing operations in India implementing their overseas strategies to outsource non-core activities by way of contracts.

Rockwell is one of the world's largest players in automation and controls, Ranjan De, country manager (India) of Rockwell Automation, said.

"Our main business will come from organic growth. We are looking at Indian companies which have complementary capabilities for acquisitions. But such inorganic growth will happen only next year," he said.

 

Rockwell expects to grow by around 12 per cent during the year, against the industry's organic growth of 4-5 per cent.

Though its industrial clients are hit by the economic recession, Rockwell is still getting orders -- primarily from those manufacturing firms which, faced with severe recession, are now focusing on improving efficiencies at the manufacturing operations to cut costs.

Rockwell claims it can help companies achieve up to 30-40 per cent efficiency at the plants and lower costs through its combination of value-added services and product line competencies, which include 'Allen Bradley' real-time control, 'Reliance Electric' motors and drives, 'Dodge' mechanical power transmission products and information management through 'Rockwell Software'.

Rockwell Software has employed around 80 engineers in the country for developing man-machine interface, application software which are also used by the company's other Asian businesses such as China and Taiwan, De said.

The company closed the year with a turnover of around Rs 150 crore. The domestic automation market is around Rs 250 crore, apart from the machines and systems worth Rs 100 crore imported from abroad, while the total size of the 'complete' automation market is around Rs 1,000 crore.

Among the major companies which are Rockwell's clients are Hindustan Lever, ITC, Reliance Petroleum, the steel plants in Rourkela, Bhilai, Bokaro and Durgapur, Hindalco, Nalco, Bhushan Steel, Indian Oil, HPLC, Gail, Reliance Industries (spinning machines) and car manufacturers such as Hyundai, General Motors and Telco (for the Indica line).

"Companies like Telco, for instance, is now concentrating on its core business of automobiles. They are sourcing most other activities from outside. We are one of their clients who manage the controls at the paints shop as well as the assembly line," De said.

Rockwell Automation has also signed an annual maintenance contract with Samtel Color for preemptive maintenance of its new picture tube manufacturing plant at Ghaziabad, he added.