The Rs 48 crore NHB Ball & Roller, which primarily makes steel balls for the bearing industry, is in expansion mode. The company has invested Rs 15 crore and is putting in another Rs 15 crore this year and next towards quality upgradation and capacity expansion. This will increase NHB’s installed capacity to 420 tonnes in May, up from over 120 tonnes at present. The company is on track to reach a turnover of Rs 60 crore this fiscal. It is now targeting Rs 100 crore by the end of next year.
“Our figures indicate we will definitely earn Rs 83 crore (if not Rs 100 crore) next year,” says director, Dharmesh Mehta. NHB has two plants in Amalsad and Bilimora, Gujarat. Its Amalsad unit primarily caters to the bearing industry. Bilimora is a multi-product facility which concentrates on chrome steel, brass and other materials balls for other applications. NHB also has a warehouse each in Pune and Bangalore for just-in-time deliveries to customers.
“Top bearing manufacturers are our customers. Even though it is difficult to quantify the size of our automotive business, it should account for about 70-80 percent of our turnover,” he adds. The company supplies steel balls to the likes of SKF India, FAG Bearings, Tata Bearings, GKN Driveshafts, Delphi Automotive Systems, Sona Koyo Steering, ZF Steering Gear and Tata Motors (NHB is a Tier 1 supplier in the case of Tata’s steering columns in heavy commercial vehicles).
Mehta is bullish on business prospects given that customers like SKF, FAG and Tata Bearings are expanding capacities as well. This means that the volume of business from these customers will increase further in the future. NHB has also started to supply part lots of fully finished balls to SKF and FAG and is in talks to supply these to other customers too.
The company’s exports account for only 18 percent of its business at present. “Our aim is to increase international business to 40-50 percent by 2010. We get inquiries regularly from Delphi Europe. We are also talking to bearing companies in Germany and Canada,” Mehta says.
NHB is a Tier 3 supplier to General Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler in the US. It delivers its products to Thomson Precision, a balls supplier to the Tier 1 vendors of the Big 3. Moreover, it also caters to the requirements of bearing manufacturers, Meter and CPN, in Italy. An important development is the implementation of Six Sigma in the company, where NHB has roped in the services of Breakthrough Management Group (BMG).
“Right from the chairman to the workers on the shopfloor, everyone has taken Six Sigma very seriously. We believe it is one of the finer routes in not only improving our quality but also saving costs in the future,” Mehta says.