Volvo Construction Equipment is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of construction machines. With a full product range, manufactured, serviced and supported all over the globe, we’ve got the right machine and the right solution for all your jobs. Take your production and profits further with Volvo Wheel loaders, excavators, articulated haulers, and motor graders. Dimitrov Krishnan, president of Volvo CE India shares his outlook on construction equipment industry in India.
Over view on Construction Equipment Industry.
At Volvo CE we feel that demand levels have bottomed out and into the future we will see growth. The government has focused strongly on improving the business landscape and the feeling is that policy changes will have a positive impact on our industry. Indeed it is disappointing that the changes instigated by government have not yet translated to improved activity, but we are expecting improved demand in 2016 – albeit at quite small levels.
Broadly speaking there continues to be an ongoing focus from contractors for more automation on job sites, with less reliance on manual labour. And on top of that, equipment owners continue to look for competitive advantages with their machines, selecting units that offer productivity benefits and deliver better return on investment over the lifetime of a machine. In addition there’s a trend to higher capacity machines. Equipment from Volvo CE is heavily-focused on offering owners better productivity levels and they have a strong reputation for delivering some of the best fuel-efficiency levels in the industry.
How does Indian C.E sector foresee near future.
The short to medium-term outlook remains very positive. It’s clear that the country needs to better develop its infrastructure to attract investment from the international market. That means normalizing the power supply across the country and this is the driver behind the government’s push for higher levels of coal output from domestic mines to feed our network of thermal power stations. In addition, we need to update our road network to improve the flow of people and goods between our cities. All of this work will require productive and efficient construction equipment.
Mining Sector has finally started to pick up. Comment
The government has set the coal industry an ambitious production target of 1 billion tonnes of coal per annum by 2020. To achieve this, mine operators have to both increase their output but at the same time achieve more efficiency from their operations. While production volumes increase, prices will likely move downwards so achieving an optimal production cost per tonne is a strong focus for mining companies.
High capacity excavators are seeing increased demand in mining as companies look to up their production output. Volvo CE is one of the country’s leading suppliers in this product category, and our 48-tonne rated EC480 is the best-selling large excavator in India. It’s popular not only because of the powerful output it delivers on the job site, but also the excellent fuel efficiency it offers which helps lower overall cost of production. And with demand continuing to grow we’re also introducing a new, larger excavator, in fact the biggest one we’ve ever built, the 75-tonne rated EC750D. We will be presenting this machine at the upcoming EXCON trade show.
How optimistic is the C.E Industry after the announcement of AMRUT & Smart Cities Initiative.
In general terms, the AMRUT and Smart Cities initiative should be good news for the construction equipment business. As ever with such announcements, there is always a time lag between when the initiative is launched and when contractors begin work. Hopefully the government’s commitment to bringing government policy to life more quickly will manifest itself on this occasion. For Volvo CE we expect higher demand for our excavator and road building product lines as a result of this announcement.
What are your expectations from Excon Fair 2015?
We are sharing a booth with our colleagues from Volvo Trucks and will be launching our EC750D excavator, the largest we have ever produced. It will be one of the biggest machines on display at the show so we’re expecting lots of visitor interest and we’re sure it will prove a popular photography spot for attendees! The unit is powered by our hefty Volvo D16 engine and we’re also offering customers an attractive 10,000 hour warranty, which reflects both our confidence in its durable design and also the strength of our customer support network in India.
