“For airports prone to excessive rainfall, concrete is the answer”

Most of the runways are adopting concreting because of more than one reason, major one being, high reliability and long service life.

Rajinder Raina, GM – Marketing, Escorts Construction Equipment Ltd

What is your comment on the recent performance of earthmoving and construction equipment market?
The market has been on the upswing for the past 2 years and the next 2 years promise a decent growth. June 2017 has been the best compared to the same month in the past few years. Fiscal 2016-17 was a great year for the industry. The current fiscal 2017-18 will not only return the numbers but also post a double digit growth over it. Whatever has been lost between 2011
and 2015 would be recovered by 2019 which is a big recovery.

What is your most advanced technology for road making?
We have a complete range of vibratory compactors comprising EC5250 – a 10-tonne calibre soil compactor, Escorts HD 85 – Tandem vibratory roller and Escorts EC3664 – 3-tonne mini tandem vibratory roller. Escorts is the only company in India that manufactures a 12-tonne plus class soil compactor. It’s a German technology compactor suited for highways, expressways etc. that cater to high traffic density. We also offer motor graders for road construction.

We have technology for higher capacity compactors also. However, the demand for such compactors is yet to come up. We offer GPS tracking system, for these machines for real time monitoring and tracking of performance and position of the machines.

Do you see any impact of demonetisation over your business?
It did have some impact, particularly with the small time hirers, but for a very brief period. On the flip side, it has helped them organise their finances better.

How the GST will impact CE buyers and manufacturers?
GST is going to be a game changer for our industry wherein it will positively impact the manufacturers and the end users. For the manufacturers, it makes life simple and easy by doing away with deposed in various states necessitated by differential tax regimes. This will avoid re-routing or taking detours thereby saving time and money. The wasteful expenditure will be avoided as well. For the buyers or end users the input tax credit will be available which hitherto was not available in full. There is an initially reluctance or resistance from the retail hirers which is natural to any major change. Going forward the account books, transactions, payments and other commercial activities of these hirers will get organised, making it easier for them to get finance or credit limit for expansion of their business. The transportation of this equipment is going to be a big relief which was a huge pain area for hirers moving from one state to another and the transporters providing transportation facilities. All in all, GST is a welcome step across the board for the industry. We must compliment the current regime for this transformative business enabling legislative act.

How do you rate the performance of your ‘JUNGLI’?
It’s been doing pretty well! The performance in tough terrains has been as promised. Today, JUNGLI stands for the attributes that it has been created for. In a market dominated by the leader in a big way, it is a product which is bound to give us dividends in the long run.

Could you discuss on the role of advanced equipment in making high speed, high quality runways for airport?
Most of the runways are adopting concreting because of more than one reason, major one being, high reliability and long service life. It has its own disadvantages like excessive wear of aircraft tires and in high traffic airports like Delhi and Mumbai the removal of rubber has to be done regularly. For airports prone to excessive rainfall, concrete is the answer.

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