MANN+HUMMEL, a global leader in the field of filtration, faces a slow growth in the Indian automotive aftermarket, yet remains undeterred and keeps expanding its manufacturing capabilities.
It was in 2005 that this German-based company established the MANN and HUMMEL Filter Private Ltd. in Bangalore in order to cater to the Indian aftermarket. Today it produces and supplies high quality filters to both Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors.
For this filtration specialist, commercial vehicle is a strategic growth segment, and it is the company’s goal to double sales in the truck business and also increase the Asian share of the group sales from 17 per cent in 2011 to 25 per cent by 2018.
According to Mr. Manfred Wolf, the President & General Manager (Automotive & Industrial Business), MANN+HUMMEL GMBH, “currently 20 per cent of the overall global sales come from the commercial vehicle segment.”
This filter maker has a manufacturing plant at Tumkur, a state-of-the-art engineering unit and R&D centre at its headquarters Peenya, Bangalore. It also has a joint venture with Bosch India and jointly manufactures aftermarket products out of their excise-free facility at Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh.
Its Indian affiliate has recently played a key investment move by setting up a plant at Bawal near New Delhi, which will be officially inaugurated in December. This new manufacturing site produces the company’s core products which include air intake manifolds, air cleaner systems, cylinder head covers, etc. Apart from being extremely environment-friendly, this production facility also meets MANN-HUMMEL’s worldwide standards.
In the non-automotive areas, the company has also started selling water filters through the strategic acquisition of Ultra-Flo, a production firm based out of Singapore. Technologies like ultra-filtration and reverses osmosis are being used for the water filtration process.
Though the company is currently facing a slower than anticipated growth in India, Mr. Wolf seems to be least apprehensive but quite confident about its future growth in India.
The German major is also building a production site in Thailand. This will be its first facility in the ASEAN free trade area. In addition, the company is also said to shift its focus on to newer markets like Russia and Turkey in view of the slowdown in the European economy.