The Wirtgen Group, one of the global market leaders in mobile road building and road rehabilitation technologies, recently completed 20 years of operations in India. This milestone was celebrated by inviting over 1,000 customers and partners to visit the Pune plant to witness the technology day and the official opening of their new plant for crushing and screening equipment on 27th March.

The plant was inaugurated by Stefan Wirtgen, President of the Wirtgen Group and Ramesh Palagiri, Managing Director and CEO, Wirtgen India.

As a part of celebrating its Technology Day, Wirtgen showcased its entire product range of machines for the road and mineral technologies. A live demo for over one hour was also organised to display the technologies such as cold milling, cold recycling, asphalt paving, compaction and also crushing and screening where new generation machines were in operation.

The event also marked the roll out of the first Kleemann Screen produced in India and also the 1,000th Hamm Compactor from the plant.
Optimistic about Indian market
Speaking of the growth opportunities in India, Mr Wirtgen said, “Our job is to continuously grow in India. We consider India as an important market for us, and it is a fascinating country full of opportunities. Therefore, we want to grow our manufacturing base in India, want to get more products and increase our sales and service representation. So we are here for a long term future.”

Wirtgen also wants to be a part of the government’s “Make in India” initiative. Commenting on this, Mr Wirtgen said, “We are very happy with the government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative and positive about the campaign. India will grow tremendously in the next few years and we want to be a small but important part of it.”

Speaking of the feedback the group has received from the Indian market during the past year, Mr Wirtgen said, “We have received a positive feedback, our turnover rose; even though the market was flat in the past years. But then we are here for long term and we see a great future. Our focus is to support our customers with better service and to create new and innovative products.”

Commenting on the current scenario for road building equipment market, Mr Palagiri said, “We expect a lot of tenders to come from building of roads in the Northeast part of India. In the last 4 months there has been growth in the road sector and EPC projects in India. There is around 20 per cent growth primarily because 5,000 EPC jobs have been awarded. We are going to target our existing customers using our compactors and city contractors.”

Creating a manufacturing hub
Talking about the new plant, Mr Palagiri said, “The new plant will be producing the Kleemann screens, initially for the Indian market. In Germany, we produce the higher capacity screens, but most of the other screens will now be produced in India not only for the domestic market but for export as well. In the same plant, we will have production of Vogele jaw and cone crushers for which the design work has just started. We expect the first machine to roll out in 12-18 months time. The design process is being done jointly in India and Germany. The same process what we did for Hamm products and Vogele pavers which will roll out by next March-April.”

Wirtgen Group has invested about ` 80 crore for the new plant, while its total investment in India is about ` 180 crore.

Increasing localisation
Speaking on the Wirtgen India’s business focus, Mr Palagiri said, “Wirtgen maintains its focus on making Crushers with a capacity of 200- to 300-tonne, both jaw and cone crushers. These products will offer standard quality at competitive price for the Indian market.”

Wirtgen has adopted the product for the Indian market like using a local Cummins engine and also adopted all the new technologies. It is also planning to do the same for Vogele pavers, which is going to be launched by the same time next year. Mr Palagiri added, “The wheeled and the tract pavers will have 6-metre width to meet the specific requirement for the state highway jobs in India, where they are trying to convert single lane into double lane. For the screens, we will have a range from 200-600 tonnes.”

Technology shift
The market size for this class of pavers is roughly around 300 machines now. Wirtgen is expecting about 30 per cent market share. In future, the company also looks for exports for the same range of products. “If we look at the world market, road building equipment category is getting divided based on the engine regulation and not much on technology,” explained Mr Palagiri. “We have US, Europe, Australia and Japan with Tier 4, while the rest of the world with Tier 2 or Tier 3. But most of the Tier 2 countries are gradually shifting to Tier 3. So the products that we are going to develop in India, except the screens, will be for Tier 3. With that we have a chance to export to any market in any Tier 3 countries.”

Wirtgen has displayed many new technologies like milling of the road. People just keep on doing layers, dig it out, throw it and put their layers. Now Wirtgen machines are capable of removing the aggregates, and there is tremendous saving of natural resources and cost. “The only additional cost what the contractors incurred is adding the extra bitumen which gets oxidised, mixing cost and the relaying cost,” shared Mr Palagiri. “Otherwise, the cost will be laying a new layer of asphalt with aggregate and 5 per cent bitumen. That’s why we showcased recycling technology. We are trying to showcase the training where the machine can directly lay the crash barrier or drains. This way we can do it much faster — around 2 km per day.” n
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We want to grow our manufacturing base in India, want to get more products and increase our sales and service representation
Stefan Wirtgen,
President,
Wirtgen Group
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We expect a lot of tenders to come from building of roads in the Northeast part of India.
Ramesh Palagiri,
Managing Director and CEO,
Wirtgen India