Forging industry talks of 35% dip in orders, seeks govt intervention

“The lower sales during those months were assumed to be an anomaly and supposed to be corrected later. However, instead of correcting itself, lower sales continued for the subsequent months,” he said. As the automobile OEMs started taking block closures, the effect spilled over to others in the ecosystem with forging units subsequently reporting lower orders.

Pasricha said forging units in Western India were impacted more given their greater exposure to the automobile sector than the other units.

Nationally, the Indian forging units have around 400 units of which 60 are in western India. The annual output of the industry is pegged at 30 lakh tonnes.

At present, Pasricha said the units have cut down on production lines as well as number of days of operations. On an average, the forging units follow the block closure of the OEM and capacity utilisation is around 50 per cent. The industry employs 3 lakh people, of which 45 per cent is in western India.