‘Made in India’ manhole covers dapple the Big Apple

NEW YORK: Manhole covers in New York with beautifully designed five-pointed stars or a raucous sea of raised dots were once handmade by famous American iron work foundries. But over the last three decades, Indian and Chinese cast-iron manhole covers have quietly begun to replace the 500-pound cast-iron covers made by the long-gone US foundries.

“New York has the greatest collection of manhole covers in the world. This is a large city and there is a lot of variety and richness in the designs,” said Diana Stuart, author of Designs Underfoot: The Art of Manhole Covers in New York City, who has photographed them by the thousands, catalogued their whereabouts, led walking tours in their name, and lobbied without success to have New York’s manhole covers made in the United States before 1970 granted landmark status.

“Thirty years ago, New York city thought it had to cut costs and get into bean counting. It started importing manhole covers from Romania, Canada, India and China. The old US iron works foundries went out of business. Now you see a lot of ‘Made in India’ signatures in the new castings,” added the historian who is better known in New York by the moniker — The Manhole Cover Lady.

Over half a million manhole covers, sewer covers, telephone lines and vault covers dapple the city surface. “A manhole cover is built to last for 75-100 years but it depends on variables. If it is located on a heavily trafficked street it suffers more wear and tear than if it is tucked away on a side street,” explained Natalie Millner, spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which maintains New York’s manhole covers.

The DEP and the Department of Design and Construction award multi-million-dollar contracts every year to foreign manufacturers for manhole covers based on the lowest bids.

“It is primarily an Asian market — we are sourcing everything from water hydrants to manhole covers from India, Taiwan, China and Korea because they offer the most competitive bids,” said John Spavins, spokesman for the Department of Design and Construction.

According to US industry sources, the lion’s share of the business is snapped up by six big foundries in India and five in mainland China. In India, it is standard practice for the big boys - RB Aggarwala and Company, Kajaria Castings, Kejeriwal, Govind Steel, Calcutta Foundry Limited, Shree Uma Foundry and Himcast - to put in aggressive bids for contracts. They later farm the work out to smaller foundries to pare down costs.

“There are at least 200 small foundries in Kolkata who get business from the bigger Indian foundries that regularly bid for contracts,” said New York-based manhole cover importer CP Garg who is a mechanical engineer from BITS Pilani and graduate from IIM, Ahmedabad. His firm has also been importing castings into the US for grates, frames, water-hydrants, valve boxes and catch basins for 18 years.

According to industry sources, Indian foundries offer cast-iron products for roughly 30 cents a pound, while China dropped prices to 25 cents per pound a few years ago. However, Indian firms regained 80 per cent of the market in 2004 after the US slapped 40 per cent anti-dumping duties on Chinese cast-iron goods.

“At least 40,000 tonnes of iron castings from India worth 30 million dollars make it to the tri-state New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area every year,” said Garg. Indian foundries also supply 120,000 to 150,000 tonnes of cast-iron covers to American national highway, airport, phone and power utility companies.

“We send quality assurance inspectors out to India. They are our own employees or from the DEP and they make sure Indian foundries are sticking to the rigid US specifications,” said Spavins.