Our end aim is to develop fully autonomous graders and we are well advanced into this.

Amarnath Ramachandran
Managing Director, ARX Mining & Construction Equipment

What are the types of Motor Graders manufactured by your company?

Arx has launched a range of four sizes of motor graders. These are the 12t, 17t, 21t and 32t. The intent is to provide a range of graders to cater to all requisite applications – national and state highways, village roads, shoulders of highways, plantation roads, hilly roads, canals and haul road maintenance for mines.

Brief an overview of the key features, advancements and specifications of the Motor Graders manufactured by your company. What are the competitive advantages of your motor graders over others in the market?

The graders are fitted with state-of-the-art drivelines. The engines conform to the latest emission norms, the transmissions are fine-tuned to maximize torque absorption apart from being highly fuel efficient. The cabins are very well designed and are aesthetically and functionally top of the line as they are designed and built in Italy. The larger models have air suspension seats and they come with a brake-by-wire feature which is a radar interfaced collision avoidance system. The graders are far better looking and are highly productive bringing more value to the customer. These better features lead to superior productivity, control and reliability.

What are the after-sales service and support provided by your company to your clients? How do look at the availability of spare parts of your machines in India?

Arx works on a high value-to-customer philosophy. We have a strong dealer network. For large mining graders, we station dedicated service engineers at site with every machine. The focus is to maintain uptime of the machine. Spare parts are key to having optimal uptime. Properly priced spare parts ensure that the Total Cost of Ownership stays low. There are several schemes where the customer can predict his cost of operations over a requisite period and cap his expenses.

What are the training and skilling programs initiated for operators and maintenance staff of your machines?

We have a dedicated team of master operators who accompany the machine to site and work with the customer’s operators to ensure that they are fully familiar with our machine controls and features. They also teach them the finer points of preventive maintenance and troubleshooting to ensure longer life.

What are the safety features incorporated into your motor graders?

We have multiple interlocks on the machine to ensure that the key parts do not get damaged. The machine is fully diagnostic and all error codes show up on the 7” colour display which is integral with the Italian steering column which has tilt as well as its collapsible ergonomic comfort for the operator.

How do you gather feedback from customers?

Feedback from customers is gathered first-hand at various levels and sources. The operators and technicians give feedback from the sites. Our sales and marketing teams also visit along with our dealers. In addition to this, our senior management also constantly keep in touch and visit customers and sites to ensure that all feedback is accurately received.

What are your plans for future product development or enhancements of your Motor Graders?

Our end aim is to develop fully autonomous graders and we are well advanced into this. We are also working on hydrogen fuel engine driven graders. Our powershift transmission are also being converted to CVTs.

What are the key challenges faced by you as well as other motor grader manufacturers in India?

The challenges faced by us today are mainly related to extraneous parameters like the pandemic, the Ukraine war, the Yemeni disruption of shipping through the Suez Canal, which is causing massive delay in shipments reaching us as time and high cost of logistics. There will also be some slowdown owing to the impending general elections and the change in emission norms towards the year end.