Tower crane suppliers visualise the current status and the future rental market in India. They also share about their offerings in this domain.
Tower cranes of various types, configurations and capacities are an essential equipment to construct any structure. Tower cranes are also a part of the material handling value chain. The economically effective and technology-driven tower cranes will enable contractors overcome the challenges of constructing taller buildings, without compromising on safety, productivity and operator comfort.

Tower cranes are available on rent throughout the country. However, over the past several years, this business has been very low and full of woes for the hirers. Having said that, this business is bound to bounce back in future. Here experts share their outlook on the tower crane rental market in India.

“Tower Crane segment has great potential for Indian Market,” says Anil Mudgil, VP-CED, Action Construction Equipment Limited. He further adds, “Usage of Tower Crane saves man power and accelerates project to a big extent.”
 
Benefits of tower crane easily surpass the cost parameters. It is because of Tower Cranes and other similar mechanisations that the contractors are able to achieve faster speed of Construction. Mudgil further says, “By using Tower Cranes, contractors are able to get savings because of man-power reduction, reduced concrete wastage and advantage of timely completion of projects.” 

According to him, companies which do not want to invest in Tower Cranes because of capital expenditure constraints, Action Construction Equipment Limited have an option of offering tower cranes on rental basis, which helps a contractor to utilize tower crane without getting into hassles of fixed cost. “Customers need not bother about operations and maintenance or availability / uptime issues. We provide the complete package which enables customers to work with tower cranes without owning them,” says Mudgil.

Sharing details on the company’s offerings in the rental segment, Mudgil says, “Our range starts from 2.5t mobile tower cranes to bigger size cranes of 25t capacity. We offer all kinds of Tower Cranes such as Fixed Tower Cranes, Travelling Type Tower cranes and Inner Climbing Tower Cranes.”

He further says, “We offer 2.5 tons capacity Mobile Tower Cranes, which are popular for small Infra and housing projects up to 10-12 floors. These Cranes are very good for smaller projects and are in great demand for tier 2 cities.”

According to Mudgil, the 5-6t Tower Cranes are mainly used for real estate projects. “In this segment, we have four different types of tower cranes. We offer inner climbing 5-tonne capacity tower crane, which can go up to 200 m. We also have 6-tonne capacity tower cranes with jib length 50 m, 55 m and 60 m,” he speaks. 

As per his observation, with builders going for prefab buildings the demand for 10-12t category Tower Crane is growing sturdily. “With the growth in Infra-projects expected next year, the demand for bigger Tower Cranes of 10-20t category is likely to grow further. We are fully prepared to indigenously supply any Tower Crane from 1.6t to 20t capacity,” he predicts.

Commenting on the shift in the demand pattern by the rental companies in India, Mudgil says, “ Traditionally rental companies in India tend to opt for Old Cranes, but at the same time Old Cranes may or may not offer reliable and trouble free operations.”

Action Construction Equipment claims to be very particular about the age of Tower Cranes in rental operations. “We have a large fleet of Tower Cranes ranging from 2.5t to 25t capacity. Being market leaders in India and because of having our own manufacturing our rental Tower Cranes in Rental are well maintained and highly reliable,” concludes Mudgil.

Everest Engineering Equipment Pvt Ltd (popularly known as EEE), a CRISIL rated, ISO certified tower crane service company, is inching toward a 25 per cent growth in sales revenue in 2017 over the previous year. EEE’s Managing Director PV Ramdev speaks on the status of the rental market for cranes.

“The rental business for construction machineries will grow definitely and it is a good business. Many corporate companies have their own fleet and are not keen to increase their machinery fleet assets because rental machines are easily available in the market. Also they can get the passenger hoists and tower cranes on rental according to their project requirement,” he says about the opportunities that cranes in the rental space.

Sharing information on the offerings by Everest, Ramdev says, “Our tower cranes and passenger hoists offer maximum safety, reliability and much better lifecycle which are very critical for rental companies. In India we have the largest range of tower cranes from 5T to 200T and passenger hoist 1T to 30T.

According to Ramdev, Everest is are focused on the execution and maintenance of industrial units such as power plants, steel plants, cement plants and construction of dams. “Precast building is also an emerging area,” he says. Everest will be supplying 32 units of 12-tonne capacity tower cranes to Pune based precast leader BG Shirke Construction Technology Pvt Ltd. Earlier, Everest had supplied 86 units of rail travel type tower cranes to the same company for their Delhi projects.

With the tremendous amount of investment in the infrastructure sector and many projects coming up in the reality sector, both these sectors are destined to return to a growth trajectory, in the near future. Since these sectors have a lion’s share in the consumption tower cranes, the future of this equipment category is assured.