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6 PACPROCESS-DRINKTECH 2019 SHOWDAILY 12 DECEMBER 2019 | SUPPORTED BY PACKAGING SOUTH ASIA & INDIFOODBEV KHS INDIA: NOT JUST A PLAYER IN INDIA – AT DRINKTECH Focus on a major role in Southeast Asia With its headquarters and factory in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, West India, on a production site of 18,000 square meters, KHS Machinery Private Limited plays a significant role in supplying the KHS portfolio to customers from India and Southeast Asia. At Brau Beviale in Nuremberg, Germany, Susanne Blueml spoke with Partho Ghose, executive vice president and board member, about the strategies of the Indian company concerning the product portfolio and actual requirements in the packaging landscape. Susanne Blueml: KHS India is active for over 20 years. How have its activities developed since its beginnings in 1997? Partho Ghose: This Indian manufacturing plant start- ed from a rented factory in Ahmedabad, way back in 1997. I was one of the founding em- ployees, with five others who went about building and shap- ing a dream under the able leadership of Yatindra Sharma, our present managing director. Back then, our primary goals were – to significantly improve the service standards for the KHS machines, which were al- ready present in the market be- fore this company was set up, and secondly, to start manufac- turing some of the key equip- ment like beverage mixer, bot- tle washer and crate washer for returnable glass bottle (RGB) operations in the soft drinks in- dustry. However, our first cus- tomers, Coca-Cola India and PepsiCo India, liked the idea so much that they encour- aged us to take more on our plate. Soon we were manu- facturing complete packaging lines of 600 BPM (bottles per minute) except the key filler/ crowner machine. We built the first filler in 2001. The portfo- lio gradually expanded in line with the requirement and rel- evance of the developing mar- ket in India. The year 2001 also saw our entry into the Indian brewery industry as well as professional project manage- ment at every level. What share of the machines of KHS India are manufactured in the country? Partho Ghose, executive vice president and board member, KHS the PET bottled water market. The glass bottles market was still the predominant force in those days, but PET was slowly but surely making inroads. By 2002-03, we were delivering small to medium capacity PET lines right from air conveyors to pick-n-place packers but ex- cluding the stretch blow mold- ers. Over the next decade and more, we kept increasing the Indian machines portfolio pri- marily with machines of higher capacity and more advanced technology. Our latest achieve- ment was the successful in- auguration of the mold shop within our Ahmedabad plant in February 2018. How did KHS Germany support the activities? The KHS Germany manage- ment board has supported us all along. KHS India started as a joint venture, with 60% owner- ship of KHS Germany. Over the years, it increased its share to more than 95% today but at the same time helped in expanding the pie. The company, which was created to cater only to the Indian market, slowly spread its wings and started export- ing to markets in Southeast Asia, China, and Australia with the support of KHS Germany. Our first lot of machines to Af- rica was delivered in 2012 for a brewery in Cameroon. Besides that, KHS Germany has con- tinuously supported us with a robust know-how transfer process, excellent training and For that, you have to under- stand a little bit about the seg- ments in the KHS portfolio. If we classify glass bottle lines, PET bottle lines, or canning lines, different proportions are relevant. Glass bottling lines with a capacity of 36,000 bot- tles per hour for soft drinks or beer have a very high percent- age of localized content, some- times above 90%. However, the moment it turns into a PET bottling line, where you have to blow the PET-bottles from preforms, this ratio drops as India does not build the blow molders, on-line inspection systems, or high-speed labelers or pack- ers even today. When it comes to PET lines, between 30 and 60% is made out of Germany, and the rest is coming from In- dia. In which steps did you increase the portfolio? I can surely give you the steps, but a more in-depth insight would be to know – whenever we make a machine – to what depth are we making it? This means that we could have a smaller portfolio of machines in terms of machine type, but with a very high amount of lo- calization in India.

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