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Minebea in India, the erstwhile Sartorius Intec which slated a Euro 1 million investment is now gearing up to increase its footprint in India to maximize the demand for high-precision weighing & inspections equipment in the pharma sector. This follows increased scrutiny by the global regulatory authorities in the country.
“We have been in the pharma space for the last 18 years and now we have set up an advanced plant on one acre land. The facility spans 38,000 sq. ft of which 22,000 sq. ft consists of the production area,” Mohan Bhat, managing director, Minebea Intec told Pharmabiz.
Another reason for looking at India to kick off our sales in high-precision weighing & inspections equipment segment is the market size and developments in pharmaceuticals and chemicals. So this lends itself to demand for high quality, precision equipment for companies to increase their reliability, safety and efficiency, said Peter Grimley, president, Minebea Intec.
“The company has a manpower strength of 150. Now the big attraction for us on India was the access to talent pool coming in from engineering, information technology and biotech. Since we are driving R&D from Bengaluru, it has been the location to spur innovation going by the availability of qualified manpower. We have human resources that we can find anywhere else in the world that easy, especially those speaking English”, said Dr. Bodo Krebs, president, Minebea Intec.
The Greenfield dedicated facility at the Peenya Industrial Area in Bengaluru allows Minebea to expand and chalk growth plans. “This will now make us largely focus on active pharma ingredient (API) companies going beyond the earlier Sartorius Mechatronics customers in the sterile manufacturing field. We have used our move to the new location as an opportunity to make improvements. Our new premises offers more space for better production control and enhanced production capabilities for future demands. With our new location we have also moved closer to our vendors enabling more frequent quality inspections and a better logistics,” said Bhat.
Indian pharma has been receptive to Minebea products because these products are present globally. Although the company’s products are expensive for the small pharma, the stringent regulations coming forth to stay complaint and these units are forced to adopt certain parameters in their production line for the export market. This is leading many such companies to invest in these products, stated the Minebea MD.
The changing graphic of the customers in India has led the company to invest here because of the demand for consistency to ensure the end product is not contaminated. This will automatically lead the SMEs to take on company's weighing & inspections equipment technology, said Grimely.
Visible trends sighted are towards growing compliance needs and cost control. Therefore we are hoping we have taken the lead as a multinational in the Make in India initiative. We are here to innovate in India, locally source and manufacture for this country which can be also sold at the global level.
The key challenges are related to cost of product. But perception is changing for the need to have a quality. Another issue is speed of development. We have to be faster in embracing new technologies and know-how to be in the lead, said Dr. Krebs.
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