Nipman Fastener expands product range
Nipman Fastener Industries, manufacturer of standard and special fasteners for the automotive and auto component industry, is expanding its product range to cater to the passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles and tractors. Nipman specialises in cold forgings and make fasteners for twowheelers and four-wheelers.
The two-wheeler industry in India is around 16 million units per annum currently. By 2020, this would be close to 30-35 million, and by 2025 this figure would reach around 70 million. So the company will stay in the fastener business for twowheelers because that is where the volumes are, and along with that it will grow in the passenger vehicle segment, tractor and commercial vehicle business as well.
Anup Kapur, Vice President, Business Development and Marketing, Nipman Fastner told
AutoComponenetsIndia that, “We are moving up in the value chain. We do fasteners for two-wheelers, four-wheelers and have now entered into tractor segment. Now we are looking to step into the commercial vehicle sector and would like to serve the entire automotive space. We have fasteners of sizes ranging from 4mm to 24mm diameter. There are commercial vehicles which need fasteners of diameter 28-30mm but it requires hot forging. Our core strength is cold forging and we are not in the hot forging space.”
Nipman has 4 manufacturing units which serve the fastener market and 1 unit which serves the steering component market. Out of the 4 plants, the company stated, 2 plants are catering to the two-wheeler and passenger car segments throughout India. The third plant caters to the Uttarkhand region and the fourth acts as a feeder plant. The company has recently opened a new plant at Bawal for fasteners and cold forged components. The fastener manufacturer also stated that the passenger vehicle steering division has started commercial production from January 2017 in technical collaboration with a South Korean company that manufactures steering systems components. This company makes steering systems for a leading South Korean Tier 1 supplier that in turn supplies to OEM’s, both in India and worldwide. “We have developed parts for 3 platforms for 3 different OEMs. There are about 8-9 platforms still under discussion. Forging and machining is catered from the Bawal plant and the machining, assembly and testing is carried out in the Chennai plant. We mainly supply to Tier-1 companies and in turn they supply to the OEMs,” he said.
Fasteners do contribute to lightweighting with the usage of different materials. There are titanium fasteners and plastic fasteners which can aid
lightweighting. But titanium cannot be used in all applications. Optimising the use of fasteners will contribute to lightweighting the vehicle, the manufacturer said.
The unique value proposition was also spelt out by the manufacturer. “There is not much technical difference that we can achieve with our fasteners. But there is always process differences which take a big hit in terms of fasteners. We always follow lean manufacturing process with state-of-the-art forging, heat treatment lines, and surface treatment lines backed by a state of the art quality laboratory. This helps us produce fasteners economically satisfying the QCD parameters of the OEMs. Processes and equipment differentiate fastener manufacturers,” Kapur said.
The customers basically expect zerodefect in the manufacturing process. The internal process has to be set up that way. The defects should be identified and corrected in the manufacturing process itself before subsequent process flows. Final inspection and finished goods should enter the line with the defect-free tag. If not the process flow and the procedures will not be economical, he said.
Nipman had a turnover of Rs 170 crore last year. It expects to have at least 15% growth this year. The company has started exporting its products and targets 20% exports by 2020.