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Dr Martin Kearns

This is the second in our series of interviews with Dr Martin Kearns – Powders Group Director at Sandvik Osprey Limited. Dr Kearns talks about the MIM industry and how a close working relationship with a production house like Indo-MIM can result in improvements in process, design orientation, and material sciences.

Q: What do you see on the MIM horizon over the next two years?
I see no reason why the successful growth of the past decade should not continue in the coming years. There will inevitably be competition from other fabrication methods, but the picture painted at conferences, including the recent MIM2011 meeting is that historic growth rates of 10-15%pa will continue. Regional differences will persist with Asia maintaining highest growth rates benefitting from opportunities in automotive and medical sectors. Overall, there is good cause for continued optimism provided the industry continues to innovate and exploit the advantages of near net shape technology and promote design flexibility. As commodity prices increase and resources become less abundant net shape technologies should indeed become more attractive.

Q: What is your net impression or take-away on your visits to Indo-MIM?
I regard it as one of the privileges of my job that I get to travel to some places that I would never otherwise see, meet people I would not have met and enjoy cultural experiences that I would not have imagined. Over the years, I have alternated visits with our Managing Director, Richard Park, Andrew Coleman and Keith Murray and we have all enjoyed visiting the Bangalore and Dodaballapur sites and witnessing the remarkable growth that has occurred over the last 5 years. Our universal view is of a highly impressive, professional company who consistently surprise us with the scale, variety and ambition of their operations. Clearly there has been a lot of investment in high quality plant infrastructure in recent years – which, together with the speed of response and ‘can-do’ mentality that we know is a characteristic of Indo-MIM’s staff, makes a formidable combination of assets. The addition of specialist processing equipment for the medical sector and the complementary activity in investment casting show us that Indo MIM is not for standing still!

Q5: How did you find working with the R&D wing at Indo-MIM?
Sandvik Osprey has a strong desire to develop specialist products and to explore the boundaries of what is possible with what is still a relatively young technology. Sandvik’s corporate approach is to add value and to offer customers ‘solutions’, not just ‘products’. We therefore welcome those initiatives from Dr Shiv and Sreekanth that seek new products and the challenges of developing new processes when called for. We are part of an organisation with one of the largest metallurgical R&D capabilities in northern Europe so we feel there is scope to do more in future to make distinctive products. We know that speed is of the essence in making new alloys and our pilot facility gives us flexibility for this although I have to say that we are stretched to give the speed of response that we would wish at present. Our ongoing investment in extra capacity will enable us to improve significantly in future and we look forward to more collaboration.

This is thesecond in a series of interviews with Dr Martin Kearns.

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At the FKCCI Annual Awards ceremony held recently, Indo-MIM won the “Best Manufacturer Export” Award in the large category. The award was received by Mr. Balasubramanian, Director, Indo-MIM.

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