Growth of state's foundry industry to be central theme in 65th Indian Foundry Congress

The growth of foundry industry in Bengal will be the central theme in the 65th Indian Foundry Congress and IFEX scheduled to be held between February 3 and 5 at Eco Park.

The foundry industry in the state has a turnover of around Rs 500 crore. With the state govt treating foundry as a priority sector, the turnover is expected to grow exponentially and touch the Rs 2,500 crore mark by 2020. Foundry Parks at Ranihati, Howrah and at Asansol has helped accelerate this growth. It may be mentioned that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has stressed the need to develop the industry which falls under MSME sector and assured every help to the investors.

The Indian Foundry Industry produces more than 10 million tonnes of castings annually and is ranked 2nd in the world and is currently on a growth path. However, despite having excess installed capacity, projections call for doubling the same in the next 10 years. Key reasons for this are, GDP is currently at inflection point where growth takes off; large market size, increasing infrastructure needs, opening up of indigenous defence procurement; facilitative government and entrepreneurial ecosystem. In comparison to world average growth rate of 0.4 per cent, the Indian metal-casting industry grew by 7.5 per cent in 2015, according to World Casting Census produced by Modern Castings, USA.

The Indian Foundry Industry is ranked the second largest in the world in terms of castings production after China and USA and produces estimated 10.77 Million MT of various grades of ferrous and non-ferrous castings as per international standards. Total sales approx. USD 19 Billion per annum of which export is approx. USD 2.5 billion. With increasing demand from automotives, railways, pumps, textile machinery and others, the industry has the potential to at least double its tonnage of production by 2025.The Indian foundry industry is the mother of manufacturing and engineering sector and is labour intensive directly employing about 5,00,000 people and indirectly about 1,50,000 people. About 90% of the units are in the MSME sector.