Partner
Foundry Daily News Fairs and Congresses

61st Indian Foundry Congress

Reading time: min

Kolkata is poised to host the 61st Indian Foundry Congress (IFC), an annual flagship event of the Institute of Indian Foundrymen (IIF) between January 27-29, on the theme "Building Brand India - The Casting Edge". The event will be held concurrent with the International Foundry Exhibition (IFEX 2013).

With over 800 delegates and 250 exhibiting companies, the 61st Indian Foundry Congress and IFEX 2013 foundry exhibition are expected to draw over 4000 trade visitors. In addition to technical presentations by Indianand international authors, the IFC will feature an Energy and Environment Forum, Student Forum, Cast Source buyer-seller meet, prominent industry speakers and a host of international participants from Germany, Italy, China, Japan, UK and USA.

Founded in 1950, IIF is an all-India industry association representing the foundry sector and comprises foundries, foundrymen, professors, academicians, foundry equipment vendors and foundry input suppliers, with a current strength of over 3000 members. Headquartered in Kolkata, with four regional offices in Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai and 27 chapters across India, IIF is a member of the World Foundry Organization (WFO), UK and of the Confederation of Indian Industry ( CII).

Speaking on behalf of the domestic foundry sector, Harsh K Jha, president, IIF said: "The the Indian foundry industry is the second largest producer of castings in the world with a production of eight million tonnes annually, behind China, which is far ahead at 35 million metric tonnes. There are more than 4,500 foundries in Indiaof which 85% are small-scale units, 10% are medium-size and 5% are large-scale units. The industry is labour-intensive, employing 5,00,000 people directly and 1,50,000 people indirectly." The smaller units are dependent on manual labour but most medium and large units are partly or fully mechanized and many larger foundries meet world-class standards.

Major foundry clusters include Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Batala, Agra, Howrah, Pune, Mumbai, Belgaum, Kolhapur, Solapur, Rajkot, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Coimbatore. Ravi Sehgal, chairman, 61 stIFC said: ""Castings produced include ferrous, non-ferrous, aluminium alloy, graded cast iron, ductile iron and steel for application in automobiles, railways, power sector, pumps, compressors, valves, diesel engines, cement, electricals, textile machinery, sanitary pipes and fittings, engineering industries, machine tools and special applications. Grey iron castings form the majority at 68 % of total castings produced.""

Mr. Anil Vaswani, joint secretary and treasurer of 61st IFC said: "The mission and vision of IIF is to make the foundry industry an attractive proposition for all stakeholders, with government support, through technology upgrades, competitiveness, enhancement of operational efficiency and capital infusion. The focus is on development of foundry clusters and common facilities for foundries."

Source: The Economic Times

[0]