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Khaitan imports Chinese line for making fans

Pradeep Gooptu

If you thought Indian companies were only looking at China to import cheap consumer goods, think again. Kolkata's Khaitan Fans Ltd has gone one step beyond and imported a complete Chinese fan manufacturing process line and the techniques to make "China-type" fans for the economy segment.

"The company's new Zolta range of fans at Rs 698 is entirely based on Chinese technology adopted at our plants," said a source in the company. "It is virtually a fan made in China and matches both locally assembled and imported Chinese fans in price performance."

Fans of the last two categories sell in the range of Rs 650-750 in the Kolkata market. Khaitan also imports from China and sells around 2,000-2,500 pedestal fans under the Merlin brand till such time it can be indegenised in viable volumes.

"The Chinese learnt the technology from Taiwan, where wages have made fan-making largely unviable, and set up factories with capacities of 10-12 million fans a year," said the source.

"The trick was in learning to use the technology in speciality plastics and mechanical and sheet metal production inside the fan, which helped to drastically reduce costs and improve looks without compromising on quality."

In table fans, antiquated cast iron bases and steel blades were replaced with Taiwanese style speciality plastic bases, blades and decoratives. New generation moulds are being imported from Taiwan to expand the product range and replicate latest processes. Plastics are lighter and cut motor power consumption.

In the course of this production restructuring, Khaitan discovered that while Indian components and raw materials were superior to Chinese ones, productivity was three times more in Chinese factories.

Besides superior discipline among workers, the Chinese units were better laid out with conveyor supply belts and high-capacity machines producing 20-25 pieces a minute against 4-5 a minute in India. The backroom at Indian factories had to be cleaned up to match the capacity.

Khaitan makes more than a million fans a year and the intention is to shift at least half the production to the Chinese technology fans. The total Indian fan manufacturing capacity owned by seven companies in the organised sector is 7.5 million, with unorganised sector having an equal capacity.

Khaitan sells its normal fans in the Rs 1,200-2,000 price range. It sent across its top management team to China less than a year ago, under intense pressure from locally made fans and imports, to study how the Chinese were making fans as cheap as the local assembled ones. The new fans are the result of this initiative.

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