Whole Industry Chain to Guarantee High-quality Pyrethroids Products: Heranba

Q: Could you please briefly share Heranba’s history of development?  What is the main business section of Heranba?  What products and services do you offer to the market?  What regions does your company serve?

Heranba Industries Limited, established in the year 1996 with a mission to improve crop productivity  and to provide products to farmers that enhance farm efficiency worldwide.
Heranba started its manufacturing activities at GIDC, Vapi an industrial belt in Gujrat with manufacturing of Cypermethric Acid Chloride (CMAC) and then many more Intermediates, Technicals and formulated products were added in the product portfolio of the company.

Intermediates : MPBD, MPBA, MPBAL, Bromobenzene.

Technicals: Cypermetherin, Deltamethrin, Alpha Cypermetherin, Permetherin, Lambda Cyhalothrin, Bifentherin, Thiamethoxam, Tricyclazole, Imidacloprid, Clodinofop, Transfluthrin, Metribuzin etc.

All Formulations like EC, SC, ULV, CS, FS, WP, WDG etc.

Heranba Industries has 4 manufacturing units in India and is one of the leading names in manufacturing of crop protection chemicals.

Heranba has its business spread all across the globe with exports to more than 64 countries and with a pan India presence to serve its customers in the Indian market.

Q: From the financial results of FY2018-9, this is the first year that your agrochemical department has reached a turnover of over Rs. 1000 Cr, 35.14% growth, so congratulations! Could you please analyze what has brought this growth? What is your vision for the growth of Heranba over the next three fiscal years?

Yes we have shown good growth in our business in past few years and we understand growth is directly related to the basket of products we offer to our customers, in the past few years we have added many products in our product portfolio like MPBD, MPBAL, which we have been able to market individually as a product as well as this product is a key intermediate in most of our products hence enabling us to increase the production capacity of our existing products. Moreover we have increased our customer base in the export market, hence has enabled us to showcase such a good growth.

In the same lines in the last year we have purchased land at Sarigam which is spread over 55000 Sq. Mt. and which will add to the production capacity of our existing products and enable us to come up with new products to offer, whereby we expect a growth rate of 10-15% YOY in coming years.

Q: The top 20 Indian agrochemical companies all performed well last year, what do you think about the prosperous and high consolidation India market?

We feel manufacturers in India were able to capitalise on the problems faced by the manufacturers in China, due to various reasons. Global demand was shifted to India, as India is looked upon as an alternate source for supply of products. That has given an opportunity to Indian manufacturers to expand their product range and capacity resulting good growth in business, in terms of volume and value.

Q: Heranba has been working on further enhancing the production capacity. How many production plants does your company have for generic products? Please briefly introduce the capacity.

We are currently operating with 4 production units located at Vapi, Gujrat and offering Intermediates, Technicals and formulation products from this units.

To further increase our capacity, looking at the increasing demand for our products, we had purchased land at Sarigam, Gujrat which is spread over 55000 Sq. Mt., where we intend to increase production of our existing products as well as add few more technical products which are in the stage of R&D. Currently on this land, we are ready with an Ultra-Modern formulation unit, which will multi-fold the production of our formulation products like EC, SC, ULV, CS, FS, WP, WDG etc.

Q: Could you share with us the future development plans of your company in the field of the export market of your interest and expansion into existing markets?

Today, Heranba has global presence and is a well-known for its quality products over the world. Company achieves more than 40% of its turnover from Export business. We export our products in around 64 countries as accounted in the last financial year.

The company was recognised for “Best performance in exports from Government of India, CHEMEXCIL” for 2 successive years (2016-17 & 2017-18). We have also received “Overseas market expansion award” from CAC committee, China for 2 successive years in 2017 & 2018. Heranba has achieved almost 35% growth in exports from 2017-18 to 2018-19, which indicates that we are more focussed to increase our exposure in the exports business.

We understand the need to be in contact with our customers every time; hence frequently our marketing team is on overseas market visits. Our International marketing team is continuously on tour throughout the year, across the globe ensuring our global presence is strengthened.

We take participation in all the International exhibitions & conferences related to Agrochemical industry. In a time, when most of the companies throughout the world, imports a lot from China, Heranba has achieved substantial exports to China. It shows our strong foothold in China market as well. Heranba has more than 250 registrations worldwide and are in the process to avail more registrations to explore more untapped markets.

With regards to the future growth of our company's business in Export market we intend to explore many more countries and customers, our strategy will be to explore new markets and customers by frequent visits, making customers aware of our deliverables, by participation in the exhibitions in untapped markets, adding more & more products in our basket to offer and increasing our registrations in those markets and most importantly timely service with quality products.

Q: According to the news released, we found you added some new products in 2017, such as MPBD and MPBAL, how are these two products doing throughout the year within India and for exports this year?

With addition of products like MPBD and MPBAL, we have done extremely well. We have been able to offer this product to our customer adding to our top line as well as this product being an intermediate to our existing products have enabled us to control our raw material cost and on the other hand made us self-sufficient for our own captive requirements. We feel our decision to introduce these products have fetched good results and expect it to contribute more in the growth of the company.

Q: Heranba also ventured into the formulation segment with a wide range of insecticides and pesticides, could you please tell us about your R&D facility and also your future projects in the pipeline?

Heranba ventured in Formulation segment years ago, catering to our Domestic market through our channel partners. Today the company is catering to more than 5000 Dealer / Distributors across the country with an office spread across the country. Recently, we have also started formulating ZC, WDG, FS, CS, formulations in-house. We are working on few more combination of molecules which are already developed and are under the trial and recommendation stage. Our formulations are also exported in good volumes and have increased considerably in past 2 to 3 years.

Q: Do you have any specific plan to introduce new products in the future? If so, what kind of products would that be?

Yes, we are working on few products which are under development stage. Currently looking at our product portfolio we have a wide range of insecticides to offer, but we foresee a lot of demand for products in the Fungicides segment and are working on the same with utmost priority.  A balanced mix of insecticide, herbicides and fungicides we have planned to offer by 2021.

Q: With dynamic changes in the Chinese agrochemical industry in recent years, how do you see the situation? From a long-term perspective, what benefits will Heranba obtain from India-China cooperation?

We all know that China’s contribution stands highest for supply of agrochemical products in the world. But, in last couple of years, China’s chemical industry emphasised on safety and environmental protection resulting an impact on the supplies from China to rest of world.

Eventually it opened the doors of opportunity to other countries to bridge the gap in demand and supply. India got the best of the opportunity due to this constraint in supplies from China as India is considered to be 2nd largest supplier to this industry worldwide, after China. With India’s favourable government policies, diversified geographical condition and available resources, India could easily manage to fill in the demand and supply gap created due to China supply crisis.

Heranba Industries Limited also sensed and grabbed the opportunities to the maximum. Since we have 4 ultramodern and multi-utility factories, we have diversified our products range. We introduced new Technicals & Formulated products in our basket, which earlier, was pre-dominantly being supplied by China over the world. In last couple of years, we have introduced more than 10 technical and many-formulated products, in our product portfolio and with our wide global presence, customer base and quality, we have been able to market these products, quite effectively and as a result, we have been able to achieve close to 80% cumulative growth in last 2 years in our sales turnover.

The article is from 2019 INDIA PESTICIDE SUPPLIERS GUIDE magazine.