The Hindu Business Line : Konecranes launching new range of rope hoists

Helsinki, Sept. 10 The Finnish company Konecranes will introduce a new range of rope hoists in India, set up an engineering centre and expand its service network in the market that it sees as among the fast growing ones.

The company also plans to carry forward its expertise in servicing cranes and hoists to start servicing machine tools. Manufacturing sector in India is buoyant and that makes it a natural market for cranes and hoists.

Mr Arto Juosila, Group Vice-President, Administration and Business Development, Konecranes Plc — outlining the company’s plans in India to a group of Indian journalists last week — said that for Konecranes the transport industry, infrastructure building and manufacturing sector in India was a major market.

India was absorbing over a 5,000 cranes a year with the West and South absorbing 40 per cent and 30 per cent and the North and East 20 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. While the Asia Pacific market, an important component of which was India, accounted for about less than a fifth of Konecranes’ sales against 65 per cent in the EU and the US.

But the market in India was growing at about 30 per cent annually with the demand for cranes exceeding 10,000 units a year. This could eventually see Kone cranes “one day setting up a hoist factory in India,” said Mr Juosila.

But the challenges are many. India is a big market but a slow one because of entry barriers like local prices and duties, ‘other’ expenses, starting salaries were growing affecting competitiveness and there is a shortage of skilled labour, he said.

For now India is an important emerging market, he told journalists who were on the tour organised by Finnfacts, an independent agency that promotes Finnish industry overseas, and the Embassy of Finland in New Delhi.Konecranes’ growth would also come from its after sales service an important component of its €1.5-billion business. The ‘lifting business’ as Mr Juosila describes it is distributed more or less evenly into standard lifting, heavy lifting and service. Konecranes’ service business is more evolved than most.

Engineering Centre

Also, over 80 per cent of Konecranes’ service contract is that of other brands. With this expertise, the company is now looking at extending the service to cover all machine tools, he said. In India, Konecranes is in the process of setting up an engineering centre with more than 50 engineers.

It has about 15 engineers now and is training nine of them in its factory in Finland. It hopes to expand its service branches — it has five now — over the next two years and increase the sales of standard lifting equipment. With the growth in steel industry, the company will also drive its heavy lifting.