MR Mac-Tech’s Chinese partner FJLIME is widely acknowledged for its cost-effective and technologically superior stock preparation lines and has some highly optimized solutions for the Indian mills. MR Mac-Tech with help of its overseas partners serves the Indian paper industry with the leading paper machine technologies available worldwide.
Paper Mart recently interviewed Mr. Rajiv Kumar Agarwal, Director, MR Mac-Tech and Mr. Stefano Germiniasi, Technical Director, FJLIME to know how these companies together serve the Indian paper industry in meeting their requirements in terms of cost-effective and efficient machine technologies. Excerpts:
Paper Mart: When we talk about capital equipment, Indian paper industry looks for economically viable and technically strong solutions. Please tell us how MR Mac-Tech can help the Indian paper mills in procuring the same? Further, what kind of solutions does FJLIME have to meet this important aspect in today’s highly competitive and quality oriented market?
Rajiv Kumar Agarwal: MR MAC-TECH was incorporated around five years back with an aim to provide and arrange economically viable technical solutions to companies keeping in mind their capital outlays, which have become difficult to manage these days. Our partners overseas are the leading names in engineering and design with cutting-edge manufacturing facilities to deliver the best technological solutions to our customers.
In fact, we have been praised for our variety of solutions which completely justifies the capital investments. MR MAC-TECH is now widely considered as the true technical partner of the paper industry in terms of offering solutions which exactly suits the requirements of our customer mills, both technology- and investment-wise.
FJLIME of course has long-standing expertise on performance related issues in the stock preparation line and the company has been involved in making some of the highly sought after stock preparation and pulping equipment, which are cost-effective and suitable for mills in India.
PM: Energy saving and fiber loss are one of the most important aspects with regard to efficiency in stock preparation. Highlight some areas wherein FJLIME’s technology helps in achieving this.
Stefano Germiniasi: FJLIME’s engineering and design efforts are absolutely focused on minimization of both fiber losses and energy consumption in the stock preparation lines. In other words, our stock preparation lines are fiber loss free with maximum energy saving. In fact, one way to minimize the fiber losses and energy consumption is to custom-design the technical solutions as per customers’ requirements and FJLIME exactly does that. FJLIME’s stock preparation lines are better in terms of performance because of inclusion of new tailing screen technology in order to reduce the fiber losses to almost zero. Besides, these lines use only those technological components, which have the least energy impact, for instance, the rotor for pulper or screen.
PM: Tell us something about your infrastructural capabilities in context of R&D setup, some pilot plants, manufacturing facility etc.
SG: With reference to R&D, FJLIME needs to be considered somewhat closer to its European counterparts than Chinese ones. 10 percent of our annual income is effectively used to develop R&D resources in order to develop new technologies, either in the form of equipment or in the form of process design. FJLIME has a pilot plant for internal trials and for testing raw material brought by customers.
From manufacturing point of view, FJLIME does not really have any limitation. The available areas, the organization of the workshop, the skill of workers allow the company to practically manufacture any equipment without limitations, which is the case with the three drum pulpers we are now manufacturing for the Indian market. It would have been impossible if infrastructural capability of the company were not at the top.
PM: There is a general perception that most of the Chinese paper equipment suppliers doesn’t innovate much and focus only on providing economical solutions. Kindly share your views on the same.
SG: Regarding innovation, FJLIME cannot be considered as a “standard” Chinese company. The mission we have while submitting a technical proposal to customers is to give them the best possible solution, a solution which will work properly and which will ensure to meet customer’s expectation. Price is of course is a further topic to be discussed, but we never give prices a precedence over technological quality.
PM: These days good number of Indian paper mills are in expansion phase. Would you like to give them any advice which they should keep in mind while finalizing the project, selecting the technology, vendor & equipment etc?
SG: It is FJLIME’s belief that a successful project requires the provision of complete services to a customer, right from the authentic process design before the submission of technical solutions, to engineering development with ensuring optimum layout from customers and informing them about necessary auxiliaries, to supervision for erection and start-up along with final support post sale whenever is required. This is the reason why an Italian office has been created; the target is to follow the customers from A to Z. My advice to the Indian customers is that they should look for suppliers like FJLIME, a company that accompanies the customer at every stage of project development.
PM: With the technological advancements in the paper industry, how your technology & equipment is matching the pace especially with the technology leaders based in western world?
SG: Since 2013, FJLIME is a joint venture between mother company located in China and the engineering and services company located in Italy, where the former is busy manufacturing technology and equipments based on technical specifications received from the later. In other words, the equipment a customer buys from FJLIME are of European standard in term of design, material selection, quality control, performance and reliability.
PM: At last, please take us through the journey of FJLIME and share the recent developments. Also, share some information about major installations made by FJLIME globally.
SG: Actually the list of recent installations made by FJLIME is quite long. We are really doing good job and have developed great market recently. We have supplied complete DIP lines in India, DIP and OCC lines in the Far East as well as in the Middle East. Indonesia and Thailand have recently purchased complete lines for duplex board production while customers located in Europe, Africa and America have selected FJLIME as supplier of complete tissue production lines. Indian customers are welcome to visit our facility and our workshop. They might be impressed to see the volume of orders we are processing yearly.