Lapp India : The legacy of leadership in cable & connection arena

Lapp has always been synonymous with Innovation and has strived to develop cables and cabling solutions to meet complex customer requirements and assist industries in creating innovative products. With our basket of innovative products, Lapp is a one stop solution catering to various industry segments, providing technological and plug & play solutions, by understanding our customer and their distinctive needs.

Q. Lapp India being one of the leading manufacturers of cables in India has established its brands in the market over the decade, please brief its journey towards this milestone & share some of its achievements?

Lapp India, a 100% subsidiary of the LAPP GROUP Germany, is a leading supplier of integrated solutions and branded products in the field of cable and connection technology. Having started its operations in 1996 with a manufacturing unit in Jigani-Bangalore, it is the second largest plant outside Germany. In 2015, Lapp India provided about 140,000 km per year of power, control, data and instrumentation cables along with connectors, accessories and end to end systems to over 3500 active customers spread across different industry segments in India. These segments include automation, textile, automotive, machine tools, oil and gas, renewable energy, process industries, as well as in the infrastructure and building sectors. Since inception, Lapp India has played a key role in Lapp Group’s global growth. In 2012, Lapp India completed the first phase of its second manufacturing plant in Pilukedi, Bhopal. The manufacturing plant in Bhopal produces more than 216,000 kms of single core cables per annum, catering mainly to the Building Cable Segment. In 2014, the production area at Jigani was also doubled and a new multi core line was commissioned in Bhopal with a total investment of over 5 Million Euros. Currently, Lapp Group has the second biggest market in India.

In an effort to protect the environment and contribute to sustainability, Lapp India received the ISO 14001: 2008 certification in 2015. At Lapp, innovation is at the core of its business and all our products are driven by innovation, to win the trust of customers. This can be seen through our milestone that the company achieved in terms of supplying 2 GW  grid connected solar project since its inception in 2010 and also has bagged orders for more than 350MW of PV projects since October 2014.

Q. Briefly let us know about Lapp offering to Indian market?

Lapp has always been synonymous with Innovation and has strived to develop cables and cabling solutions to meet complex customer requirements and assist industries in creating innovative products. Lapp offers a range of products that are flexible, temperature resistant, chemical & mechanical resistant, weather resistant, flame retardant, halogen free, fire survival etc. With our basket of innovative products, Lapp is a one stop solution catering to various industry segments, providing technological and plug & play solutions, by understanding our customer and their distinctive needs. One such example is the ÖLFLEX® HEAT 650 cable that can withstand ambient temperature up to +650°C and is designed for heavy industry applications.

Q. What is your go-to-market strategy for Lapp in India?

Lapp India has pan India presence with dedicated regional Sales & Marketing offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune and Bangalore. The team at Lapp India has been growing to complement our double digit growth in business year-on-year. Lapp India has over 300 employees to best serve customers and meet the growing demand of the business.
At Lapp, we ensure we are where our customers are. Our go-to-market strategy includes three channels – direct, distribution and online. The direct business is led by our dedicated team across 23 sales offices, 4 regional offices and 5 service points in India. At Lapp, our business is structured as OEM and Projects to selectively grow our markets. We have a strong dealer network of 120+ to create brand awareness and visibility thereby giving us higher reach in the market. Lapp has a strong presence in the industrial segment whereas retail is a growing segment, which we have actively considered. In addition to traditional channels, customers can buy Lapp products and solutions on a click of a button on our e-commerce portal; www.thelappstore.com

Q. What are the key technological trends driving cable and connection industry?

The Indian wire and cable market has been growing steadily with the expansion of industrialization and infrastructure. The Indian cable industry is broadly categorized into low voltage power cables; control and instrumentation cables and data, BUS and networking cables. The imminent trends that are driving growth of Indian cable industry over the next few years will be robotic cables, due to the growing automation market.

Automation is the way forward for industries to achieve the desired growth and higher productivity. Robot technology has now become one of the most dynamic areas for development. Following this trend, Lapp India is focusing on robotic cables and system solutions like Servo Motors that are needed for robot applications.

Industries are focusing on specialized cables, used for special applications in industries including oil and gas, ship building, construction equipment, elevator, renewable power, windmill solutions and security systems. With innovative products focusing on niche segments and special requirements such as fire survival cables, robust application cables, highly flexible cable with slim and light construction, high temperature application cables, and high frequency data cables with low loss transmission, the industry is all set to revolutionize itself into next phase of development.

Q. How do you see Automation driving growth for the cable industry?

Factory automation in India is exhibiting significant growth due to growing demand from automotive hubs across the country. The industry control and factory automation market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.7 per cent and will reach US$ 202 billion by 2020, creating a greater demand for robotics and efficient manufacturing methods*. Further, the Make in India initiative is expected to play an important role in boosting the adoption of factory automation solutions in the country resulting in manufacturing more complicated and sophisticated control technologies. Complex automated industrial systems such as manufacturing assembly lines require an organized hierarchy of cables to function productively.

Cables are the backbone of industrial automation and an efficient cabling system is required to connect numerous components in an automated factory. With new technologies in automation, new standards have been established with respect to Etherline and Profinet which is driving towards interconnected devices and systems. So, when it comes to automation, cable manufacturers’ work towards manufacturing cables which ensures  quality, precision and accuracy in production.

* http://www.marketsandmarkets.com

Q. Does Lapp have special product offerings for the Automation segment? If yes, what are those?

The manufacturing sector has seen tremendous technological changes over the last 2 decades with automation as the key highlight. Automation’s significant advantage is increasing productivity in facilities. Scalability, repeatability, waste reduction and enhanced quality control gives companies an advantage by reducing long-term costs, thus increasing product output and revenue.

Cables play a prominent role in running ‘smart’ factories and an efficient cabling solution connects multiple components in an automated factory. Robots, for instance, have become a crucial element of complex production processes and are used throughout the industry. As robots are always in motion, they must work accurately and reliably under continuous stress. Since even the smallest of interference can lead to high costs when it comes to production
failures, cable manufacturers work towards manufacturing cables which ensures smooth and reliable operations.

To automate the manufacturing process, applications start demanding higher bandwidth and faster speed, making cables the dependable medium of power and data transfer. Lapp produces cabling solutions for automation in diverse industries including Process, Factory, Building and Material Handling. For example, highly flexible control cables like OLFLEX® ROBOT series and low frequency screened data cables like UNITRONIC® FD series are used in applications with very high linear bending stress. Also, Lapp provides its customized end to end solutions like cables and chains under the brand name OLFLEX® CONNECT.