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When Satyan Consulting Engineers’ Founder and Director, Mr Satish Yadnik established his entrepreneurial dream in 2006, after leaving Alfa Laval as Sr General Manager, he already had 25 years of experience in process design mainly in the alcohol, starch, and evaporator which has now been expanded to over 45 years.

With these four decades of proven track record under its foundation, today, it is no wonder then that the PMC Consultancy and Technology provider firm has successfully completed more than 60 consultancy projects in the fields of Distillery, Starch, and Industrial Evaporators in India and Abroad.

A Team of Dedicated Technocrats

Satish shares, “A right process and design consultant is always a backbone of any project, and we are committed to playing a role to make our customer’s project technically and financially feasible.” The Directors, including Satish and Rahul, are a team of dedicated technocrats who are successful professionals with proven track records in their fields. Satyan’s head office is located in Akurdi, Pune, India and it is well-equipped for consultancy and design assignments for Distillery, Starch, and Industrial Evaporators.

Satish informs, “With over 15 ongoing assignments across India, South America, and Africa, we are leading the starch and distillery consulting space and have been able to carve out a niche for ourselves through the value we bring to our customers.” Over the years, they have made technology tie-ups and process innovations that have helped their customers set up highly efficient plants.

Their design expertise in the Industrial evaporator space is widely known in the industry. “Over 50% of the evaporators for molasses-based alcohol plants in India have been designed by us,” states Satish. Their technology innovation has helped cut down 1kg/lit of steam consumption in the alcohol production process.

Over the years, they have optimized the processes in the starch and distillery space and implemented these for their customers. He adds, “We have designed systems that ensure ‘Zero-liquid-discharge’ for our industrial projects where-in effluent treatment, recycling, and evaporator designs have played a key role.”

A Constant Customer Focus

Telling more about Satyan’s offering and aspects that make it stand out in the cutthroat competition, Satish says that they provide all the significant services to distillery/ethanol, and starch industries:

• Feasibility report preparation,
• Detailed project report preparation,
• Detailed design and engineering services,
• Technical specifications and technical tendering process for supplier selection – “We will help you save 10-15% over a typical LSTK offer while ensuring there is no compromise on quality,” assures Satish.
• Engineering design reviews, technical assistance, visual inspection and expediting,
• Project planning, monitoring and management, and supplier co-ordination,
• Commissioning support at the site,
• Site supervision and construction management through full-time personnel deputation.

• Process troubleshooting and custom solutions
• Modernization, de-bottlenecking, and troubleshooting for existing plants
• Process plant simulation for distillation systems
• Process modelling and configuration of most energy efficient systems

According to Satish, their core technical expertise is what differentiates them from other consultants. They have been instrumental in bringing alcohol and starch technology to India and have over 40 years of practical experience in this field. This helps them identify the problems ahead of time and take steps to mitigate those risks and challenges.

While most of the consultants are commercially driven, their focus is quality and technical specifications. Their unbiased technical feedback provides customers with negotiation leverage that eventually leads to maximum cost savings for the customer. “We always hold our customers’ objectives as a top priority, and our entire team strives to ensure success for our end customers,” he insists.

An Extensive Journey of Innovations

Satish is a Chemical Engineer from a well-known institute LIT Nagpur and holds post-graduate Diploma in Business Management from the University of Pune.

He was involved in a number of technical tie-ups for Alfa Laval with Katzen, Delta-T, and Dorr Oliver for starch and alcohol processes. He also has a number of achievements in process development in the alcohol and starch segment. He travelled almost the whole of Europe, Southeast Asian countries, and the US for business development in Alfa Laval. He also has experience in handling complete project management in Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. “The first cane juice to alcohol plant of 15KL/day was designed by me while I was working with Alfa Laval,” says Satish.

The first turnkey alcohol plant by Alfa Laval in Vietnam was managed by him. The technology for this plant was from Katzen in the USA. He has exposure to both Katzen and Delta-T technology as he was instrumental in technology collaboration agreements for fuel ethanol and grain-based alcohol process. He adds, “I was instrumental from Alfa Laval when the starch business of Dorr Oliver was acquired.” He has exposure to both technologies i.e., Starcosa of Germany and Dorr Oliver of the USA. He says, “I am sure, we can get advantages of all these technologies while executing your project.”

Satish’s completed/ongoing assignments are as follows:

• Worked as a Sr General Manager in Alfa Laval India and was handling the natural resource business unit handling the Starch and Alcohol Project.
• In charge of 100KLPD ENA assignment in Uganda.
• Technical consultant on a 250KLPD Ethanol assignment in Odisha and MP.
• Technical consultant on a 200KLPD Ethanol assignment in Maharashtra.
• Technical consultant on a 300KLPD Ethanol assignment in MP.
• Technical consultant on 120KLPD Ethanol assignments in CG, MP, and Gujarat.
• Technical consultant on 100KLPD Ethanol assignments in UP and Maharashtra.
• Technical consultant on a 105KLPD Ethanol assignment in Maharashtra.
• In charge of 200Mt/a day corn starch plant in India.
• Implementation of 400 MT/day corn starch plant for Alwais cousin in Syria.
• Expansion from 400 Mt to 800 Mt/day corn starch plant for Alwais cousin in Syria
• Technical adviser to Alfa Laval alcohol and starch division from 2006 to 2008.
• Technical adviser to Nagarjuna fertilizer and chemicals from 2006 to 2008 for an alcohol project using feedstock as sweet sorghum.
• Pre and post-order consultancy for 250KL/day grain-based alcohol plant being set up in Myanmar.
• Design review of Adlers Biofuels 45 KL grain-based alcohol plant in Maharashtra.
• Process Engineering for 150KL molasses-based fuel alcohol plant in Sudan.
• Complete process engineering for 30KL jogeshwari brewery.
• 300KL ethanol plant for Renuka Sugars in Brazil.
• 2X65KL molasses-based ethanol plant for Luna chemical in Gujrat.
• Technical adviser to Shri Renuka sugar group, Mumbai for alcohol plants.
• Developed PIDs and other documentation for 600,000 liters/day and 200,000 litters/day fuel alcohol plant for Advance Bio LLC USA.
• Detailed project report for 45,000 liters per day potable alcohol for Tamil Nadu sugar federation (two plants).
• Design drawings review assignment for Globus sprit for 80kl/d and 100kl/day potable alcohol plant.
• Design and drawing review for 170KL/day potable alcohol plant for Bihar Distillers and bottlers.
• Technical adviser to Janatha Fish meal project in Udupi, Oman.
• Technical adviser to Alwais Cousin starch company on a case-to-case basis.
• Technical adviser to Luna chemicals Gujrat.
• Technical adviser to PRO industries in Uganda for 120KL potable alcohol plant.
• Technical consultant to Renuka sugars, Mumbai.
• Technical consultant to Shri Samarth process industries Pune.
• Estimates for Bharat Starch 400 MT/day starch expansion.
• Varalakshmi Starch Industries Salem: Complete process engineering, inquiries handling, visiting suppliers in India and outside, equipment selection, technical comparison, and facilitating order placement for all the equipment inclusive of silos, effluent treatment, and key equipment. Visited Syria, Thailand, USA, and China, for sourcing equipment.
• Estimates and Pre-Engineering for 100MT/day corn starch plant in Thailand.
• Coordination with Arunkumar Chaudhary group for the start-up of an 80MT/day corn starch plant in Nepal.
• Consultant for 150 MT/Day starch project Polygon Group, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
• Consultant for 150 MT/Day starch project Aditya Starch, Ethiopia.

Over the years, he has built up a strong team and they are now geared up to scale new heights in the starch and distillery space.

“Our understanding of the vendor ecosystem, industry trends, technology innovations, and government policy making has helped us carve out a niche in our industries of operation,” he states.

Owners Engineers

Revealing their professional values and qualities admired greatly by clients, Satish says they succeed when their customers can achieve their goals with regard to quality, schedule, and cost of the project.

“Customer’s success is our driving factor,” he divulges, adding, “We pride ourselves in being ‘Owner’s Engineers’ and have customer’s priorities and objectives as our guiding principles. While we bring in the technology and process expertise, we ensure alignment with the customer’s business objective. Our customers admire us for this outlook.

We are driven by the below values:

• Value creation of the customer.
• Customer centricity.
• Quality of execution.
• Teamwork
• Open and transparent communication with all stakeholders.”

Mr. Rahul has taken up the marketing, business development and customer liaison functions for Satyan. He is a strong proponent of Satyan’s core values and has been instrumental in driving focused growth for the company.

Model-Based Execution Approach

Regarding the challenges surmounted by them, Satish says that over the years, they have navigated through industry cycles and have realized the impact of external factors (geo-political and climate) that impact their industries. They started their journey through projects in North America, however, in 2008 when the recession hit the US, most of the activity in North America in the ethanol sector came to a standstill. They shifted their focus to the Indian sub-continent and carved out projects in India and neighboring countries. “During 2008-2012 saw good government support that led to multiple projects on the distillery side. Parallelly starch industry also started picking up and gave us good growth during 2010-18,” he reflects.

The Pandemic impacted the business dynamics and a lot of projects got shelved. Meeting clients in person, site visits, international travel, supply chain, shipment, and deal conversions all got impacted. He adds, “We utilized the time to improve upon the process and technology areas and came up with fine-tuned and templatized models. We created a model-based execution approach and created a team accordingly.”

Post-pandemic and since 2nd half of 2021, the business has picked up the pace and they have been leveraging their models and templates to speed up execution. Online meetings have now become a norm and customers are comfortable operating remotely.

In his advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the engineering and design solution space, Satish says that while every industry will see its share of ups and downs, the only way to sustain and succeed in the long term is through core technical expertise and staying relevant to your customers.

“Build your foundations on core technical skills and focus on value creation for your customers.”

Exploring the Ever-Green Future

On envisioning scaling Satyan CE’s operations and offerings in the future, he reveals that the ethanol market, while it is currently noticing a tremendous uptick, will consolidate in India in the next five years. Greenfield projects will dry up and most of the work will be focused on brownfield and improvement projects. These projects need specific expertise from a process side. “We are developing the team accordingly and building design skills in-house over software like ChemCAD and Aspen.”Starch is an evergreen field, and Satyan is growing its team in this area. From a long-term perspective, Satish and the team Satyan are betting big on this industry/vertical for their growth.

They are exploring other green energy sectors like Bio-CNG, and biomass-based boiler fuel production, through technology tie-ups, to keep the order inflows. “We are also exploring avenues for expansion into manufacturing and supply of associated equipment,” he concludes.