Megaplast is gradually expanding its presence in the Indian market by introducing new products, maintaining international quality standards and adopting innovative technologies. In an interview with Indian Infrastructure, Gaurav Jain, Director, Megaplast India Private Limited, talks about the company’s performance and key milestones, new products and offerings, key challenges faced in operations, technologies and innovations adopted in manufacturing processes, potential areas of growth, and plans for the future…
How has Megaplast evolved over the years? What have been the key milestones?
Megaplast India Private Limited (Megaplast) has always believed in investing in state-of-the-art equipment for manufacturing quality products. Owing to our belief in supplying products adhering to international quality standards, we lose orders due to our prices, but never compromise on quality. Our biggest milestone was in 2012 when we invested in state-of-the-art equipment for manufacturing geomembrane liners. Along with this, we invested heavily in our laboratory and getting testing equipment from all around the world. Megaplast was the first company in India to have equipment for high pressure oxidation induction time (OIT) testing.
What are the current product offerings?
Megaplast manufactures a wide array of products. Our focus is on geomembrane liners for the infrastructure industry. We manufacture high-density polyethylene and linear low density polyethylene geomembranes which are widely used in mining, power, landfills, reservoirs and canals, amongst other applications. Megaplast is the only company in India that manufactures 8 metre wide geomembranes, which help in reducing the number of welding joints during installation. We manufacture GM-13 spec material as our standard product. GM-13 is the internationally accepted standard. We also manufacture products for specs higher than GM-13 as required by specific projects. We also manufacture smooth and textured geomembranes in the range of 0.5 mm (500 microns) to 3 mm (3,000 microns). Textured geomembranes provide additional friction and help where slopes are steep.
What are the key challenges due to the current economic scenario?
Megaplast supplies high quality products as compared to cheaper, lower quality alternatives available in the market. Given the current economic scenario, customers are looking to reduce costs and at times this leads to their choosing an inferior quality product. Given our belief of not supplying inferior quality, we lose out on orders.
What are the new technologies/innovations being deployed in the manufacturing processes?
Megaplast is investing continuously to improve its products. It is planning to launch a new line of geomembranes – gas barrier geomembranes. This will be helpful where harmful gases are being generated due to waste in landfills. Gas barrier geomembranes will block all the unwanted gas from escaping into the environment.
Our laboratory is fully equipped for all types of geomembrane testing. Megaplast is the only geomembrane manufacturer in India with National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) certification and Geosynthetic Accreditation Institute-Laboratory Accreditation Program (GAI-LAP) certification. GAI-LAP is the leading laboratory certification authority for all geosynthetics internationally. We can test for all characteristics of geomembranes including high pressure OIT, stress crack test and accelerated UV testing, amongst others.
What are the potential areas of growth going forward? What is the overall business outlook?
Given the latest announcements by the government about opening up the mining space, we are very hopeful of the industry picking up pace. We are also hopeful of increased investment in and increased quality consciousness related to municipal solid waste landfills and hazardous landfills as our country becomes more environmentally conscious. Overall, we are looking at applications of geomembranes increasing with the move towards deployment of higher quality geomembranes.