Venus Pipes and Tubes Ltd. is one of the leading stainless steel pipe and tube manufacturers with a firm reputation. While growing in the field of innovations, Venus has expanded its wings of uncompromised services and products worldwide.

In an interview with Tube & Pipe India, Mr. Arun Axaykumar Kothari, Managing Director and CFO, Venus Pipes and Tubes Ltd., takes us through the business journey of the company, the infrastructure setup, and its ambitious expansion plans.

“As we have been catering to customers (both domestic and international) in only one metal segment since our inception… This gives us the benefit of segment expertise”

Tube & Pipe India: Could you please give us a brief outline of the business journey of Venus Pipes & Tubes along with its crucial milestones?

Arun Axaykumar Kothari: We are one of the growing stainless-steel pipes and tubes manufacturers and exporters in India having over six years of experience in manufacturing stainless-steel tubular products in two broad categories: seamless tubes/pipes and welded tubes/pipes.

Our Company operates in the stainless-steel products industry. Stainless steel is a value-added product with high corrosion-resistant properties, superior aesthetic finish, and higher life span. These features have helped in increasing the popularity of stainless steel across the world. Despite being one of the largest producers as well as consumers of stainless steel, the per capita stainless-steel consumption in India remains low. India’s per capita stainless steel consumption has increased from 1.2 kg in 2010 to 2.5 kg in 2019; however, its consumption is much lower compared to the world average of 6 kg per capita as per a D&B Report. This low consumption pattern is an indication of the inherent opportunities existing in the sector.

The table below sets forth some of the major events in the history of our Company:

TPI: Kindly cast some light on the infrastructure, manufacturing capabilities, and machinery installed at your facility.

AAK: We have one manufacturing plant which is strategically located at Bhuj- Bhachau highway, Dhaneti (Kutch, Gujarat) in close proximity, around 55 km and 75 km from the ports of Kandla and Mundra, respectively, which helps us in reducing our logistic costs on procurement of raw materials and imports and export of our products.

Our manufacturing facility has separate seamless and welded divisions with the latest product-specific equipment and machinery including tube mills, pilger mills, draw benches, swaging machines, pipe straightening machines, TIG/MIG welding systems, plasma welding systems, annealing furnaces, etc. As of July 2022, our manufacturing facility has a total installed capacity of 12,000 MT per annum which is spilt up i.e. SS welded pipe/tubes with 8400 MT per annum (700 MT per month) & SS seamless pipes & tubes with 3600 MT per annum (300 MT per month).

TPI: Tell us about your product portfolio and clientele.

AAK: We are currently manufacturing welded pipes/tubes with sizes 6 mm – 219.3 mm and seamless pipes/tubes with sizes of 6 mm – 114.3 mm diameters. We manufacture five product lines, namely, stainless steel high precision & heat exchanger tubes; stainless steel hydraulic & instrumentation tubes; stainless steel seamless pipes; stainless steel welded pipes; and stainless steel box pipes.

Under our brand name “Venus”, we supply our products for applications in diverse sectors including chemicals, engineering, fertilisers, pharmaceuticals, power, food processing, paper, and oil & gas. Some of our clients are Aarti Industries Ltd., Adani Group, Ajanta Pharma Ltd., Asian Paints Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd., Dalmia Bharat Sugar and Industries Ltd., Indian Space Research Organisation, ITC Ltd., JK Paper Ltd., etc.

TPI: What are your key strengths?

AAK: Our competitive strengths are:

International Accreditations and Product Approvals

We are one of the growing brands in stainless steel pipes/tubes having a presence in both seamless pipes and welded pipes/tubes segments. We follow international standard manufacturing practices and our manufacturing facility benefits from the quality benchmarking certifications such as ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, ISO 45001:2018 from Bureau Veritas, a third-party inspection organisation accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, and certification under the Indian Boiler Regulation (IBR) for manufacturing and supply of stainless steel seamless and welded pipes and PED 2014/68/EU and ADW/AD 2000 –Merkblatt W0 from TUV, which is a requirement for supply in the European Union countries. Such practices and accreditations, coupled with our technical capabilities and knowhow enable us to manufacture products for both domestic and international customers as per ASTM (US), EN (Europe), JIS (Japan) and DIN (Germany) standards. Our capabilities and accreditations have enabled us to supply our products to 57 Fortune India 500 companies in the past across sectors, including chemicals, engineering, pharmaceuticals, oil & gas, etc., that follow stringent quality standards. We believe that our certifications and industrial expertise favourably position us in servicing client requirements across all segments of the stainless steel seamless and welded pipes/tubes market.

Specialised Production of Stainless Steel Pipes and Tubes

We are a pipes and tubes manufacturer with the sole focus on manufacturing welded and seamless pipes in a single metal category, i.e., stainless steel. As we have been catering to customers (both domestic and international) in only one metal segment since our inception, over the years, we have built expertise in terms of the production process, inventory management and marketing of products in the stainless steel pipes and tubes segment. This gives us the benefit of segment expertise thereby placing us in a position of advantage vis- à-vis our competitors in accurately assessing and responding to customer preferences in this segment as there are very few manufacturers in this single metal product segment. We believe that this focus has well positioned us in attracting and retaining customers with requirements for specialised stainless steel pipes and tubes including continued client interest from emerging sectors like chemical, petrochemicals, engineering, oil & gas, fertilisers, food processing, pharmaceuticals, power, etc.

Multifold Demand for our Products

The demand for our products in our ordinary course of business is generated from three broad categories:

• New projects: We supply our products for new projects across a diversified range of sectors, including but not limited to, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, engineering, chemicals, etc., on a regular basis throughout the year. We have maintained our presence in these sectors on a consistent basis in the last three financial years and have continued to secure orders both from existing and new customers.
• Repair and maintenance: We regularly supply our products to existing and new customers, consequent to normal wear and tear of the products being used by them. The frequency of such orders is dependent on the relevant sector and typically an instruction/order is raised to supply a specific number of pieces in order to rectify the deficiency.
• Replacement: Most of our products are used in the transportation of highly corrosive fluids, requiring production in compliance with applicable quality standards. Due to their application in a highly corrosive environment, these products slowly corrode throughout their calculated design life. After the designed service life of a particular piping bundle of any project is over, it is essential to replace the entire piping with new pipes.

We believe that the demand from the aforesaid categories ensures a strong order book on a year-on-year basis. Further, considering the number of sectors serviced by us, we believe that the demand for our products shall increase in the future placing us in a competitive position. Considering the nature of our products and their demand, we further believe that we shall be in a position to create new customer relationships and strengthen the existing ones due to repeat orders.

Experienced and Qualified Team

We have an in-house quality team comprising 30 dedicated personnel working under the overall supervision of our board of directors. Our quality control team ensures that our raw materials as well as end products are tested on all quality parameters to ensure that we are compliant with the international product standards.

Also Read: Venus Pipes & Tubes Receives BIS Certification

TPI: Please shed some light on the market footprint of Venus Pipes & Tubes along with the expansion plans.

AAK: We sell our products both in the domestic as well as international markets. In the domestic market, we sell our products to the end customers as well as traders/stockists while in the international market we supply our products through traders/stockists, authorised distributors, and certain marketing representatives in the European Union market. We started exporting our products in the year 2017 and as of today, we have exported to more than 21 countries including countries in the European Union, Brazil, the UK, Israel, etc.

We are proposing to expand our existing manufacturing capacity for welded pipes/tubes and seamless pipe/tubes by manufacturing higher-diameter welded pipes (up to 1219.2 mm) and seamless pipes (up to 168.3 m). The following is a brief description of the machinery that are proposed to be procured for the purposes of increasing the production capacity of the welded as well as seamless pipes/tubes:

Further, we also plan to set up a piercing line for manufacturing of hollow pipes with the capacity of 800 MT per month, as our backward integration strategy. The total capacity post planned CapEx would be welded (2000 MT per month) & seamless (800 MT per month) capacity i.e. 2800 MT per month.