Tell us how big is the Indian clean room market? What percentage of growth has been recorded in the last three to four years?
| Gaurav Saraf |
The Indian clean room market would be approximately five million sq ft per year. It is growing at an average of 10-15 per cent year-on-year. The estimated number 80 per cent includes new facility flooring and 20 per cent for renovation of old facilities.
Kemwell, a known name in the pharma industry, both in the domestic as well as in the international market, is one of your clients. Tell us about your other clients and the services you offer to them?
Kemwell is a contract drug manufacturer and we have done the flooring for them in their facilities. Our other client list includes Biocon India, Bangalore, Zydus Cadilla, Ahmedabad, Ferring Pharma, Mumbai, and Vaibhav Healthcare, Baddi.
What is the difference between a flooring solution installed within a pharma facility and one installed in other sectors?
The floor in other sectors is more design-oriented and also at the same time can shed particles, does not need to have chemical adherence and need not be seamless. We do a lot of products for retail, hospitals and work place interiors.
Who are your major clients?
We have offered Square Foot’s flooring solution to more than 100 facilities and our client list includes all major pharma companies like DRL, Shantha Biotech, Cadilla, Claris Life Sciences, Wockhardt, Ranbaxy and other big names among pharma companies today.
Tell us more about Square Foot’s flooring solution for Kemwell Biopharma?
We have offered Kemwell Biopharma seamless vinyl flooring which has been coved. The corners of any room remain unclean as it becomes tiresome and difficult to clean every corner of room. Therefore, it may be a reason to develop fungi or bacteria. To avoid this problem, the corners of room – where the joint of wall and flooring comes – are shaped in curvature style in order to make cleaning easier. This curvature shape at the corner of the flooring is called coving. There are no wall and floor joints seen as there is no 90 degree joint to the wall and flooring. The joint comes above the skirting of the flooring and wall.
We have also offered them wall solutions which are vinyl wall coverings wherever they have civil walls.
What is the USP of this product?
This is a maintenance free product and comes with a 10-year guarantee. It is particularly useful for the pharma sector depending on the changes in production lines and processes rooms which are prone to be changed. Pharma grade vinyl companies need not replace the whole room instead of replacing a part of the area. These products are machine made in Sweden by our partner Tarkett and are not in situ like epoxy so the consistency and quality is guaranteed.
Can this be considered as a cost-effective solution for pharma companies?
It is a very cost effective solution as these products have a minimum life of 10 years. When customers compare this with epoxy wherein the top 1-2 mm needs to be relaid every two years, this is much more cost effective. In epoxy, the client spends initially and also spends 25 per cent of that cost every two to three years to refurbish. The hidden loss in this cost is the closure of production for two weeks while it is being renovated. In vinyl our oldest installation in India was in 2001 and still has the same flooring. The life cycle cost of pharma grade seamless vinyl flooring is half that of epoxy.
What has been Kemwell’s experience with Square Foot?
Kemwell has been using our products since 2004. They have been currently used in the manufacturing of drugs and medicines at their recently inaugurated plant at Bangalore as well as they are happy with the work done and products installed in 2004 are still lasting.
Which other products are available and how do you want to differentiate your products from others?
Presently there is epoxy and we have a special pharma certified vinyl flooring. The market is huge and to make it cost-effective, some companies would use epoxy for their domestic manufacturing facilities. Epoxy as a product also works in some areas like active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) wherein we don’t have a solution today.
Primo Premium and Eclipse Premium will be relaunched in the next year. A lot more subtle colour palettes are being introduced.
What environmental, health and safety norms do you adhere to?
Most of the products earned two LEED points and gases emitted by flooring standard is 10 times less than the acceptable European Standard.
What is the targetted grow rate?
This year we are targeting to grow at 25 per cent.