Spreading Its WINGS

Schwing Stetter India’s foray into non-concrete related construction machinery gives it an edge in delivering quality solutions to the infrastructure sector

Records are to be broken, and that is what Schwing Stetter India is upto. This year the company has already overcome the coveted milestone of 1000 crore sales and spreading its wings further Stetter has joined the bandwagon of innovating into new markets with the launch of a dozen new products, in the concreting and non-concreting equipment space. It has forayed into new verticals which include foundation equipment, access equipment, tunnelling, lifting and material handling. Surprisingly, out of the 12 products launched during the BaumaConexpo 2016, only three products are related to concrete production, transportation and placement equipment – batching plant M30Z with inline silo, transit mixer with pump TMP 32.6, and heavy duty stationary pump SP 4507. All the other nine products relates to either recently entered or new verticals.
Explaining the diversification strategy Anand Sundaresan, Chairman, Schwing Stetter Sales and Services states,“Every year, we strive to increase our product range and expand into parallel product lines to suit the requirements of the construction industry. We put our best efforts to provide our customers with the best-in-class product range and product lines to suit their various requirements. In 2014, we entered the material handling industry; in 2015, we forayed into the earthmoving segment and in 2016, now, we have forayed into the industrial and environmental technology segment.” He adds, “We have showcased our latest product innovations that are developed and upgraded keeping in mind to suit the current needs of the construction industry which will in turn help the customers to grow their business.”
2016 witnessed Schwing Stetter India specially addressing the key focus areas of Government of India such as Clean India or Swachh Bharat and Skill India campaigns. Towards these goals, Stetter has launched Smartec sludge pump, which will be of great help in projects like cleaning of Ganga, metro rail construction, waste water management and smart cities states Sundaresan, “We are proud to announce that we are continuing our renewed focus in transforming the way water is recycled in our country.”
VG Sakthikumar, Managing Director, Schwing Stetter Sales and Service elaborates. “We believe in introducing products with the technology with which the market is prepared to absorb. To elaborate this, the manpower availability, the need for completing the construction faster are some of the key parameters which will prepare the market to absorb the product specifications that will help them meet the requirement. It is pointless to bring the most advanced machineries when there is absolutely no need for speed, scale or skill in a particular market. We are careful, to bring the technology which matches with the market aspirations. We would not like to overdo and kill a product prematurely in the process. Therefore, we have addressed the current requirement by launching our new products.” He adds, “We forayed into the material handling industry through tower cranes and self-loading mixers in the recent past. Recently, in our endeavor to support the Swacch Bharat mission, we forayed into industrial and environmental technology through sludge pump technology.”

Wings Spread Far & Wide
Schwing Stetter as a company stays always focused in introducing the latest state of the art technologies that is required for the construction industry especially in India. The group has 83 years’ experience in seeing the progress of various countries like Germany, USA, most of the Western Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, China, South Korea, etc which are now developed markets.
Schwing Stetter India offers concrete batching plants for concrete road construction, concrete roads, not only for national highways, but also for state highways, district roads and village roads apart from such high capacity batching plant for making rigid pavement. Stetter also offer concrete batching plants for general development like construction of road over bridge, bridges across rivers, retaining walls, culverts, curbs, etc. These equipment include concrete batching plants, transit mixers and concrete pumps including truck mounted boom pumps, in places where the roads pass through hilly terrain and construction of tunnel is inevitable. Their shotcreting machines are very useful in holding the tunnel immediately after the excavation. States Sakthikumar, “We offer products which have lowest operating cost and, lowest fuel consumption. Along with high productivity are the key s of all our equipment that solely drives on longevity. Our equipment are designed to consume less fuel, operates with low decibel levels, safer to operate, consumes less parts and has a very long service life which makes our equipment, a favorite among our customers. Portability, interchangeability, versatility, operating efficiency are standard features across all models.” He adds, “We are expanding our after sales network close to our jobsites to ensure uninterrupted support in spare parts and services.”

Buoyant Market
According to Sakthikumar in the next few years’ earth moving and construction equipment (ECE) is expected to grow at a tremendous CAGR of 20-25%. Currently, ECE market accounts for only $3 billion, but its growth potential is more in near future, such that the market would be around $16-20 billion by 2020. Indian ECE market has the greatest capability to grow at 20-25% to reach 330k-450k unit sales by 2020 wherein concreting equipment is to grow at a CAGR of 15% annually.
Shedding light on the trends in the concreting equipment business Mr. Sakthikumar says, “The concreting equipment business has seen a revival in the last quarter of 2015 and in the beginning of 2016. The main driver for this growth as of now is the road projects. Since many of the road projects announced will be done with our batching plant for road construction has started doing well in this period. Apart from the road infrastructure, we also have good activities in railways, especially in the metro railway projects. We are hopeful that in the future that power projects like hydro-electric, thermal, atomic, wind power, real estate to carry on this growth trend in the concreting business.” He adds, “We are experiencing a growth in 2016 and we hope to consolidate this growth and augment capacity to give our delivery commitment to the customers.”

Bridging the Knowledge Gap
“Schwing Stetter launched its training department in 2004 and created excellent infrastructure in training concrete pump and batching plant operators in various locations that include Chennai, Dankuni, Manesar, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The main training centre in Chennai has already churned out 6000 trained operators to meet the requirements of the customers who have bought Stetter machines. Avers Sundaresan, “Schwing Stetter India is well prepared on the skilling front, we do not see any bottlenecks and we quite prepared for in the future too. Many leading construction companies regularly make use of our training facility to meet their requirements on training. Similarly, its training simulators will offer opportunity to the operators to move onto virtual experience and simulation to train them in safety and operation of concrete boom pumps. This will be a one step forward compared to the current learning with the graphics.
True, Schwing Stetter has been leading the pack, especially in the concrete production, transportation and placement equipment market, and its strong focus on diversification is expected to further consolidate
its strength and give it an edge in delivering quality solutions to the infrastructure sector.

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