Featured Story – Heavy Metal & Tubes: A true believer of “Make in India” for global consumption

“Heavy Metal & Tubes is a company with a consider-able history and reputation,” begins Mr. Sandeep Kumar Mathur. Founded in 1978, it can be considered to be one of the pioneers of cold drawn tube manufacturing in In-dia for carbon steel and alloy steel. The company began production of commercial quality cold drawn seamless carbon steel tubes in Mumbai in the late 1970s and in 1982 opened its second plant at Ankleshwar in Gujarat. Very quickly it transformed itself into a dedicated producer of niche quality products finding applications in critical industries such as refineries, petrochemicals, power plants, fertilizer industries, chemical plants and several others. Nearly a decade later in 1991, after having firmly established as a reliable producer, Heavy Metal & Tubes “HMT” invested in two new manufac-turing facilities at Chhatral in Gujarat, fully dedicated to the manufacture of seamless carbon and alloy steel tubes and stainless steel seamless and welded tubes. These investments helped the company to meet the exponential growth in demand after the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 and also garner a significant share of the ever-growing Indian market.

Certainly one of the factors leading to the company’s resounding success and helping it to differentiate itself from the competition has been its ability to produce so many varieties of tubes and pipes in different grades, thicknesses, sizes, and lengths under one brand. “No one else does what we are doing in India,” says Mr. Mathur. “Hence we tag ourselves as a perfect blend of quality and integrity.”

Seamless stainless, carbon and alloy steel hollows are mainly produced in-house or are bought from ap-proved vendors domestically and around the world. At Heavy Metal & Tubes they are cold pilgered and cold drawn on draw benches with precision tooling (dies & plugs) to achieve required dimensions and smooth surfaces.
All tubes undergo requisite heat treatment, straighten-ing, and surface treatment operations, after which they are tested according to code/customer specifications before being marked and packed ready for transport to customers. Special packaging has been developed to ensure that the tubes are not damaged during transit. In order to bend tubes, the company possesses several modern semi-automatic ‘U’ bending machines that are used for precision cold bending of tubes. The accuracy of the bend is ensured by precisely prepared jigs and fixtures. The company has considerable experience in this since bending is carried out for a whole variety of applications like heat exchangers, boilers, condensers, and economizers, in carbon, alloy and stainless-steel seamless and welded tubes.

Heavy Metal & Tubes seamless and welded tubes are largely used in shell & tube heat exchangers, but also fi nd use in air-fi n coolers, boilers, condensers, etc. Not surpris-ingly, the selection of tubes play a signifi cant role in such equipment as they are used in such vital industrial seg-ments as oil & gas, refi neries, chemical & petrochemical, pharmaceutical, power plant, sugar, and fertilizer plants around the world.
The company is also capable of producing tubing up to 34 meters long, which is a signifi cant factor that differenti-ates from the competition. Very few companies can do this in India. In addition to the above segments, Heavy Metal & Tubes also supplies tubes for the automobile industry, railroads (locomotives), defence sector, hydraulic and pneumatic systems, instrumentation and many more.

“As is known,” says Mr. Mathur, “we have been specialised in the manufacture of heat exchanger & boiler tubing for several years now. As these tubes play a very critical part and are at the heart of heat exchangers / boilers for heat transfer operations, it is not surprising that such tubes have to pass through a series of very stringent quality checks during the entire production process.”
Building a pathway towards success therefore necessitates that Heavy Metal & Tubes places great emphasis on the quality aspects of its work. It has therefore attained ISO 9001 : 2015, PED & ADW0 accreditation. Moreover, the company has implemented a quality assurance system that covers all production stages from raw materials, cold working, and heat treatment, right through to packing and dispatch. All components of this system correspond to the requirements of national and international codes, as well as, where needed, to individual customer’s quality and technical requirements. The company’s quality control department works independently of the manufacturing shop.
Quality is further guaranteed by a wide range of testing facilities, as per code requirement, mandatory & supplementary test including: air-under-water, eddy current, flaring, flattening, hardness, hydro, reverse bend, tensile, ultrasonic, as well as laboratory tests with spectrometers, metallurgical investigations by metallurgical microscope and to determine grain size, corrosion, and microstructure. Both the plants have their own separate laboratory set-up with testing equipment. All tubes undergo hydro testing. Testing is carried out by trained, qualifi ed personnel in compliance with the company’s strict ‘Quality Assurance Manual’. The tests help to safeguard
that the highest quality manufacturing standards can be maintained according to the intended application, technical delivery conditions and customer’s specifi cations. In addition, the production sites have also been equipped with reliable testing and measuring equipment for destructive and non-destructive testing such as Inter-granular corrosion testing, eddy current testing & ultrasonic testing.
It goes without saying that the mill and its products have been approved by signifi cant inspection agencies including: ABS, Bureau Veritas, DNV, EIL, IBR, LRIS, Intertek, PDIL, SGS, and TÜV, among numerable others. Additionally, the company is approved by a large number of major custom-ers and end users to whom it regularly supplies products such as PEMEX, QP, SABIC, BHGE, Alfa Laval, BHEL, BPCL, CPCL, FACT, HPCL, IOCL, KFL, L&T, NFL, NPCIL, NTPC, TECHNIP, Reliance, SAIL, and many others.

“Another factor that particularly stands out in our company is the high standard of technical competence of our staff,” says Mr. Mathur. “They are not only knowledgeable and skilled, having relevant technical degrees where appropriate, but are also loyal and committed. Some of our employees have worked with us for anything from fi fteen to thirty years. It says a lot about the culture that we can hold on to them and this ensures that we have a great deal of skill and experience in-house to fall back on. Certainly at a time when many companies fi nd it diffi cult to fi ll technical vacancies, we do not experience this type of trouble. Young engineers want to join us and build their careers under our guidance. They feel involved and challenged in contributing to our success and we likewise take a great interest in helping them shape their careers.”
Management is equally concerned for all employee’s health & safety along with environment hence been ac-credited with certifi cation ISO 14001 : 2015, ISO 45001 : 2018 and OHSAS 18001 : 2007.

Roughly 60% of the Heavy Metal & Tubes products are sold within India. The remaining 40% is exported around the world. Today the company’s products reach as far as the Americas – Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, USA – and Europe – Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, whilst in the Middle East their products are exported to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. In addition, they also have clients in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia and several other countries. “The quality and services that we provide are very much appreciated by our clients,” says Mr. Mathur “as is seen by the large numbers of repeat orders we receive on a regular basis.”
With regards to the tubing market for heat exchangers, Heavy Metal & Tubes tend to concentrate its sales to four major regions of the world: India, South Korea in Asia, Italy in Europe, and North America, though manufacturers of heat exchanger equipment in the former Eastern Block countries of Europe and Russia as well as the Gulf nations are also equally important. Certainly not much has changed in the past ten years with regards to this market situation.