“This expansion was planned and started last year and the facility became fully commissioned recently,” says Satish Godase, director, Nu-Vu Conair. “It is to build in-house capability for manufacturing most of the parts that we used to source from vendors. It will in turn help us deliver utmost quality to customers at reasonable cost and at the same time meet tight delivery schedules.”

The company is a joint venture between Nu-Vu Engineers in Ahmedabad and Conair, based in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania. In Ahmedabad, it manufactures central vacuum conveying systems, drying systems, gravimetric blending systems, chillers and mold temperature control units, crystallizers, belt conveyors, granulators and other equipment.

Godase said the new plant is part of the company's continuous improvement program and said the new facility will help deliver customized solutions faster. The vast majority of the company's sales come from India, but the firm hopes that its exhibition will boost exports.

“Over the last couple of years, we started focusing on export markets, especially the Middle East and Africa, which are yielding better results for us,” Godase states. “Currently our exports are less than 10 percent of domestic sales.”

He said the company has been growing more than 15 percent a year the last few years and is targeting the same this year. Godase believes the Indian government's active moves to restrict single-use plastics could impact industry growth.

“A blanket ban on single-use plastic commodities will definitely affect the plastics industry as a whole,” notes Godase. “We feel recycling is the solution to this problem, and there is a lot of scope to do it effectively and efficiently. As of now, there is no clarity on the ban on single-use plastics, and we will be able to assess the impact once we have clear guidelines from authorities.”