A SOLID, CONCRETE SPACE

The growth of the Concrete Equipment segment is led by growing customer preference for high capacity and technologically advanced batching plant. Equipment Times finds that factors such as increasing number of construction projects, shorter completion time, and the demand for customized solutions by end-users are further fuelling growth of this equipment.

The Indian concrete equipment market is anticipated to grow in the construction industry along with increasing foreign investments, and rising number of smart city projects in the country.

On the basis of value, batching plant segment is the largest segment in the Indian concrete equipment market. The growth of the segment is led by growing customer preference for high capacity and technologically advanced batching plant. Moreover, factors such as increasing number of construction projects, shorter completion time, and the demand for customized solutions by end-users are further fuelling growth of this segment.

Government initiatives towards infrastructure development is further boosting the demand for concrete equipment in India. Some of the construction projects in the country include Smart City Mission, AMRUT, the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation of Urban Transformation, Metro Rail in urban areas, Bharatmala, and Sagarmala, among others.

In addition, government is also supporting the Indian concrete equipment market by liberalizing taxation policies for the construction industry such as GST and custom duty. In 2018, the government of India reduced the GST on concrete equipment from 28% to 18%, which will help the concrete equipment manufacturers to reduce the overall cost of equipment and other operational losses.

Around the world with concrete pavers…

Concrete paving machines are multipurpose machines, particularly used in building concrete roads, sidewalks, and pavements. These are self-operating machines that have auger, a screed, and a hopper. Paving machines play a significant role in the pavement and road construction industry since the past few years. These machines are employed across a wide number of building projects ranging from road constructions to tunnel and bridges. Paving machines can operate several types of construction materials such as concrete, bricks, asphalt, and solid blocks. The concrete paving equipment with the latest network communications system technology enables easy, two-way communication between all accessories and G+ controller, as well as the other smoothness indicator technology is said to have significant growth for the concrete paving equipment market. G+ concrete controller is used in the conventional Roller compacted concrete(RCC). RCC is used in many applications like airports, storage, industrial, and military facilities. The paving machine market is segmented by product type into heavy concrete placing and light concrete placing equipment. Different augers, hoppers, and screen layers are used for each type of equipment. Similarly, other systems such as guides, vibrators, screed crowns and conveyer systems also vary with respect to the area to be paved. Light concrete placing equipment are easy to transport; however, they cannot pave large horizontal roads. Heavy concrete paving equipment are able to pave large horizontal roads. Concrete placing equipment find applications in various sectors, such as road constructions and airport barriers. These equipment are operated on fuel type such as gasoline and diesel.

Opportunities in the Global Concreting Equipment Space… 

Growing trend of automation and high demand for low maintenance and small size products is the key opportunity in the concreting equipment market. Automatic equipment are viewed as cost-effective and an efficient alternative in recent years as it uses computerized programs for some operations. Furthermore, automation enables enhanced productivity and safety of workers.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic

Major customers of concreting equipment are from the construction industry and are using the services through rental channels. Customers and service providers are expected to renew and update the service contracts to face the economic crisis through mutual understanding and contribution. Furthermore, the progress of some projects is restricted due to the shortage of labor and the city-wide shutdowns.

Rental Scenario…

India is a growing economy with huge urbanization and has so much more to build. The construction equipment renting business is the upcoming business sector in which suppliers and other professionals can rent out unused or idle equipment to other contractors and professionals. But it has a lot of challenges to be overcome is an unorganized sector. The major challenges are unprofessional vendors, delayed projects, breakdowns of equipment, and no immediate alternatives in case of breakdowns. These start-ups have encased the problems into a business idea, the crux of the idea is to rent out the construction equipment as having ownership of construction Equipment incurs heavy cost to companies like operating, depreciation and maintenance costs. The small companies which are short of capital cannot buy construction equipment because of small volume and uncertainty of projects. So to have the optimization of cost and time, leasing of this equipment is done to small or medium construction companies.

Leaders Speak

Ramesh Palagiri, Managing Director & CEO, Wirtgen India, said, “The Wirtgen Group is the world market leader in concrete paving machines. Wirtgen offers Offset and Inset range of concrete pavers. Offset pavers are used to produce monolithic concrete profiles such as protective concrete walls, kerb profiles, gutters or narrow paths. With offset slipform pavers, the concrete is transported into the offset mold via a loading conveyor or a conveyor auger. The offset mold can be mounted on the left or right-hand side of the machine. A number of molds in a wide range of different shapes and sizes are available for individual applications. The offset profiles are continually produced monolithically, with or without reinforcements. Machine features include a top-quality machine control system, a practical steering and drive system and stringline-free concrete paving.”

According to V.G. Sakthikumar, Managing Director, Schwing Stetter India, “More and more clients are moving towards Boom Pumps due to its flexibility and mobility in constrained areas. Today, 3D printing of buildings using ‘Special Concrete’ is slowly gaining prominence and is still a evolving technology .Our Boom pumps armed with robotic concrete dispenser will become the future of concrete placement. Today, our concrete Pumps are embedded with IOT and Telematics for accurate pumping and efficiency. 

Ajay Aneja, Chief Marketing Officer, AJAX Engineering, said, “Based on the value, the batching plant segment is one the largest in India’s concrete equipment market. The growth of the segment is led by growing customer preference for higher capacity and technologically advanced batching plants. Factors such as the increasing number of construction projects, shorter completion time, and demand for customized solutions by end-users are further fuelling the growth of this segment. We have widened our Batching Plants portfolio with higher capacity batching Plants of 75, 90 & 120m³ to suit customer needs and we offer a complete range from 20 m³ to 120 m³.”

Debabrata D Chakraborty, Senior GM, Concrete Division, Pakona Engineers, said, “We could see a growing demand for Fully Automatic Vertically casted Pre-cast pipe machines as customers and contractors are looking forward for fast and efficient precast manufacturing process. With Pakona pipe making machines highway contractors can cast 40 boxes in a day, thus reducing 25 days cycle of cast-in-situ Box culvert directly into a single day. In fact, Pakona PPM 2500 has a distinction of being one of the fastest precast culvert making machine in India.”

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