India has innovated a lot in graphite chemicals in the last five years. “Processing industry is putting a lot of investment in scaling up its operations and R&D but it has not been broadly given its due despite the fact that there is a $30 billion opportunity in the next decade," said Vikram Handa, Managing Director, Epsilon Carbon Pvt. Ltd. while speaking at the recently concluded 4th Edition of NextGen Chemical and Petrochemical Summit 2024 organized by the Indian Chemical News in Mumbai. 

Handa emphasized the need to recognize the potential of processing industries at the inaugural session, ‘Making India a Global Manufacturing Hub: Opportunities & Challenges’. 

“Lithium ion is one big opportunity that can be achieved through backward integration. Battery material is a huge opportunity and we can replace the imports if we build a roadmap. The good thing is that there is enough headroom for all the players to grow, both SMEs and large companies, where each stakeholder can contribute immensely to the growth.” 

“We are innovating a lot with investments into R&D. We have really good universities and institutes that can support us in innovation. But that kind of focus has not come and it has also got to do with lack of awareness,” opined Handa. 

Speaking on the latest trends, Handa said: “In the last 4-5 years, India is moving more and more towards manufacturing and the focus is on steel, cement, defense and chemicals. These industries have consolidated over the years and in every space as we have 4-5 players that form 80-90% of capacity. For the chemical industry in India to transform into a manufacturing hub, it has to tap the opportunities. 

“When I look at the industry, I see lot of large companies over the years, both government owned and private owned besides mid-size and smaller companies. While it is a challenge for new players to come in and really become big in metals and power but in chemicals there is a lot of headroom to grow. The small companies can become medium size while medium can become large and there is opportunity for large to come very large. I think that’s where the opportunity lies for India to become a global manufacturing hub. The point is how you go up the ladder in size, innovation, and capacity.” 

Sharing his company’s journey and experiences, Handa mentioned: “We started coal tar distillation companyy focused on catering to aluminium smelters and other carbon black manufacturing in India. We took the opportunity forward in 2019 to integrate into carbon black and thus moved ahead into that space. Today, we are 1, 15,000 tonnes and we should be 2, 50,000 tonnes by October this year hopefully, making us the third biggest in India. In a small span of five years, we despite not being from this industry, have made good strides. But in a space that only has 6-7 players, there is a lot of headroom for a company like us us and other players. Also, in this industry to get bigger and bigger, many factories have grown, focusing more on the export market. We continue to grow even if not much happens around us but the opportunity of India becoming an export hub as well.” 

Talking further about his company’s operations, Handa added: “We have been focused on battery material. Back in 2019, we took a bet that we think this is going to be an interesting space. You need an access to technology. In the last five years, we have invested a good amount of money in synthetic graphite business. So, we have forward integrator business. We are one of the companies in India that makes battery materials. We make the Anode and have done an acquisition this year to get into cathode manufacturing as well. Hence, we are in this mid-stream processing industry which is a pure play chemical industry.” 

On the opportunities available for the industry, Handa said: “We as a company have also seen that there is an opportunity to replace imports into India before it is a China+1 opportunity to export and we have seen that play out in the last 3-4 years. I think still a lot of chemicals get imported into India and technology still comes from Europe, US and Japan. We can innovate, manufacture in India and supply downstream customers in India. We can become an export hub for these chemicals as well. What we have seen is that one needs to be at a certain tipping scale. You can't do downstream and specialty chemicals unless you are on a certain scale. And this is how we have to build our roadmap. We need to get to a certain capacity and that will help us go downstream. Hopefully, we will have a roadmap in the next five years.”  

“When we started looking for locations to build plants, we have actually seen availability of a lot of the building blocks thanks to the spending by the government and the infrastructure, ports and natural gas. I think India is moving forward,” concluded Handa as he expressed optimism for the future.