Logistics firm Armstrong to exclusively sell Pitney Bowes sorting machines in India

Armstrong Machine Builders, a Pune-based firm in the logistics automation space, on Tuesday entered into an exclusive tie-up with $4.7-billion Amercian firm Pitney Bowes to sell the latter’s machines in India.

The agreement allows Armstrong to sell Pitney Bowes products exclusively in India.

Through the tie-up, the firm would also be selling automated sorting machines solutions — that are a mix of software and hardware — in Brazil, Russia and China, though it is not exclusive, Vineet Majgaonkar, Chairman, Armstrong Machine Builders, told Business Line .

The ₹22-crore company, which is looking to raise funds, has been able to churn out cheaper automated solutions for the Indian market, and has seen 32 per cent compounded growth in last 3-4 years. The demand for machines that profile and sort packets has gone up, driven by an increase in e-commerce and omni-channel business, with India Post, Gati-KWE and Future Group racing to speed up their delivery mechanism.

Armstrong, which has over 400 employees, said it is also looking to hire 50-100 people by December this year.

How machines help The profiling machine, used primarily for air cargo, weeds out inaccuracies in billing for express firms, said Majgaonkar. For instance, these machines measure the volume and weight of packets, and charge whichever is the higher amount.

With automated sorting, the incidence of goods landing up at the wrong destination has dropped from a norm of 5-12 per cent earlier, to 0.1 per cent.

These machines also sort the products based on pin code and drop the packets into anything up to 300 pin codes.

Logistics companies have, therefore, started installing faster sorting machines. For instance, Gati-KWE has put in place a machine that can process 7,000 parcels an hour at a location that Armstrong was unwilling to disclose. Earlier, Armstrong had installed a unit near Pataudi that sorts 4,500 parcels per hour.

Higher revenue With the use of such machines at India Post’s sorting centre in Mumbai, which handles 10,000 parcels a month, Armstrong says it was able to increase the revenue by ₹5 lakh a month.

Armstrong has done such installations for India Post at several locations, such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Lucknow and Bengaluru.

In the run-up to the Goods and Services Tax, Armstrong had put in place a sorting system in Nagpur along with Germany’s BEUMER Group, for Future Group, at a cost of ₹70 crore. The company has also installed an automation machine at an Amazon warehouse.

COMMENT NOW