I had an idea: Assemble a team of AI/ML interns—mentored by an industry veteran—to address the operational headaches of extrusion plants. To validate the concept, I discussed it with the owner of a regional facility.
He didn’t lead with the usual grievances—volatile metal prices, rising energy bills, tariff wars, heavy subsidies for low-cost competitors or freight rate swings. Instead, he got straight to the point:
“If we’re to match rock bottom market prices, we must either run at a loss or cut corners on quality, and cutting quality destroys our reputation.”
That statement cut through the technical jargon. Smaller extrusion businesses often feel trapped: Bid low and erode their standards, or hold the line on quality and see orders vanish. But this isn’t a fatalistic choice between undercutting and exit. There’s a third path—upgrading—through targeted investments that simultaneously drive down costs and strengthen product integrity.
So, how do you break the cycle without breaking the bank? Start with:
- Affordable Digitalisation & Focused Automation
Install simple sensors on presses to track die wear, cycle times and scrap rates and use a basic dashboard to uncover inefficiencies. Then automate your biggest bottleneck—billet handling, die changes, or stacking—with a modular robotic or quick change die system for 10–20% productivity gains.
- Trade Leverage & Market Positioning
Differentiate on quality and service rather than price alone. Highlight ISO certifications, low carbon production methods and faster regional logistics, while tapping free trade agreements and export incentives to improve margins and secure premium contracts.
- Collaborative Ecosystem & Policy Influence
Join or form local extrusion clusters to share training, R&D resources and bulk purchase automation kits—achieving collective scale. Simultaneously, advocate for targeted subsidies, digitisation grants, and energy efficiency programs to amplify in plant upgrades.
Bottom Line: You don’t have to race to the bottom. Productivity and positioning are the bridges between price and quality. By combining affordable digitalisation with focused automation, leveraging trade incentives and working collectively, smaller aluminium extruders can compete on cost and integrity—no quality compromises are needed.
In the next column, Smart Moves, Not Shortcut, I’ll explore three transformative strategies aluminium extruders can adopt to compete globally without compromising quality. Stay tuned.
Dear Akhil Ji,
I read your article and insight into the margin pressures of small ( I guess ) Al extruders .
Good inputs. Permit me to share my experience of measures taken to control costs when I was the Director -Marketing and Sales of ALUMECO ( Denmark ) .
We had a big advantage of our input being imported ingots and very smartly bought on the LME , which gave us a big heads up in metal costing. However the wide fluctuations in Indian metal prices and its related pricing wud result in actual realisation being lower than original costing /order price.
Secondly, by efficient design of the furnace for its heat balance followed by proper planning the heat treatment load cycle gave us savings in our overall production costs.
Further, using the historical data of schedules of regular customer , we did production run of MOQ resulting in overall reduced rejection rates vis a vis repeated production runs of same die.at different times.
Happy to read your discussion topic of the challenges and options faced by the small AL extruders.permit me to share my experience of controlling production costs without having to lower quality when I was The Director -marketing and Sales of ALUMECO-Denmark some years back.