After mapping the geology of different parts of nation and closely analysing the market and consumer behavior, Hailstone has designed specific solutions for the Indian crushing and screening sector says RJ Williams, Managing Director, Hailstone Innovations Pvt Ltd.

What are the opportunities you see in Indian crushing and screening market today?
Hailstone Innovations is very optimistic with regards to current situation of Indian crushing and screening market. We have made a strategic decision to improve our presence pan India. To achieve this we have also set up a new state of the art factory spread over two lakh square feet for our latest Agile Track machine assembly system.

The budget too has made provisions for big projects which includes roads, infrastructure, new smart cities and railways. Such measures have added to our confidence with regards to the existing and long term market opportunities.

What kind of innovations are designed by you to meet the emerging demand for crushing and screening?
We have put a lot of effort on market research and data analytics to map the geology of different parts of the country and also understand the market and customer behaviors. Keeping in tune with the market demand, Hailstone’s main consideration while designing any new machine is to ensure that they are compact, modular and movable. For the emerging market, we are also developing state of the art machines like track mounted crushing plants, floating type cone crusher of wide capacity range, horizontal shaft impactors for soft material crushing in different parts of the country.

What are the criteria to keep in mind while designing a crushing and screening plant?
We basically and primarily focus on two main pillars of quality and cost effectiveness. So each and every design from our end will be targeting a product of high quality and low price which creates lesser downtime and minimum production cost per ton for the customers. This helps them to get the ROI at the earliest.

How do you see the impact of the present government policies in this market?
The recent union budget is very promising as there are a lot of measures focusing on infrastructure development and dedicated commitment towards nation building activities. Norms should be formulated in such a way that there is a push for sustainable development throughout the nation.

What kind of training do you offer to your dealers and customers operators so that the machines deliver optimum efficiency? Hailstone’s main desire is to keep customers happy and ensure that they are able to extract the maximum operational efficiency of our machines.  We have three types of training’s mainly one at our new training center in Palakkad, Kerala. We also do training at customer locations and third one at specifically planned training campaigns held at selected locations at regular intervals of time. Also, we have started our virtual training programs with VR enabled systems on a pilot mode.

What are some of the existing challenges which the crushing and screening industry needs to overcome in order to facilitate a sustainable business climate?
Coronavirus (COVID-19) will hit us hard, the industry will experience a temporary economic recession. But the impact will cease to be a problem after the second quarter of the year. Meanwhile effective lending opportunities from the financial institutions like banks and NBFC will be expected as a measure to improve the ease of doing business in India.