The Fabric of Excellence - Avinash Kumar Tiwari

In an exclusive interview to the editor of Inpaper International, Mr Avinash Kumar Tiwari, CEO of Porritts & Spencer, a Rs 430 Million Company, commanding a market share of 65% recently acquired by Voith, mentions the road map to reach a target of Rs 1000 Million in 5 years from now.

Machine clothing is an essential fabric for paper manufacturing either at press section or drier section. The world over, there were quite a few manufacturers of machine clothing in the past but as in other segments, s have been blowing and many companies which had its routes beyond the boundaries of India got merged due to taking over of the parent company by another multi-national. One of the major suppliers in the machine clothing segment in India is Porritts & Spencer (Asia) Ltd, a subsidiary of the then Porritts & Spencer, UK, and as a sequel to Porritts & Spencer, UK coming under the umbrella of SCAPA, Porritts & Spencer Asia become a member of this group. Consequent to the acquisition of P & S, UK, PSA has become a part of Voith group.

Mr. Avinash Kumar Tiwari,
CEO, Porritts & Spencer (Asia) Ltd.

Porritts & Spencer (Asia) is in the business of producing paper machine clothing (PMC), Fibre-Cement Sheet making felts and high-tech textile processing felts. Earlier PSA was engaged in the manufacture of woven and cotton dryers for pulp, paper and board industry. However, keeping the area of core competence, PSA decided to confine itself to PMC, fibre-cement sheet making felts, high-tech textile processing felts. Today, P&SA claims to be the only Indian manufacturer in a position to supply the entire range of machine clothing to paper manufacturers.

PSA has its manufacturing facility on a 30 acre site with an extensive green area in the industrial town of Faridabad, Haryana.

P&SA, an ISO 9001 company, has made indelible imprint on Indian paper industry as a reliable and quality supplier of fabrics to paper industry claims its young and dynamic Chief Executive, Mr Avinash Kumar Tiwari.

In an exclusive interview, Mr. Tiwari unfolded the future plans of their MNC in meeting the needs of paper industry. While briefly touching upon the history of P&SA in India, since its inception in 1968, he said that in the protected economy the purchasers did not have options or choices but it got changed with the liberalisation which touched the shores of India in 1994-95. The machine clothing industry, whose fortune is linked with that of paper industry did, exceptionally well in 1995-96. While justifying the take over and consolidations, Mr Tiwari mentioned that mergers of P&SA with Voith would help the paper industry to get the quality goods and said that the German manufacturers are known for their precision in any sphere of activity.

While making a distinctive comparison of various manufacturers, he has all the praise for Germans and says, of course any business man would like to go for growth, but more than the growth they are dedicated to the product quality, dedicated to the business ethics and dedicated to the way of doing things which are different than what we have experienced in English days, that doesn’t reflect, that there was something wrong with the way we did there business, but what I want to convey is that it was different and German’s are different and now the beneficiary for this change will be the customers because the felts now produced under Voith are much more precision oriented and efforts of the company will be much more scientific and much more technology oriented.