The Hindu Business Line : Escorts Construction ties up with Altec

Escorts Construction Equipment Ltd (ECEL), a major player in the construction and material handling sectors, will enter the growing earth moving equipment business in 2008-09 fiscal.

Last week, the Faridabad-based company — part of the Escorts Group — signed up with Altec of US, a global major, and is establishing a large manufacturing facility in Ballabgarh to give a push to these diversification plans.

While the Ballabgarh plant, its fourth (others are in Faridabad, Sahibabad and Bhiwadi) and largest integrated seamless construction facility is expected to commence operations in April 2008, another small unit is also being set up in Rudrapur, according to Mr Rajesh Sharma, Associate Vice-President (Marketing & Sales).

The Rs 417 crore (2006-07) turnover ECEL had earlier exited from its joint venture with JCB for earth moving equipment by selling its stake.

“The decision to go on our own is based on the huge opportunities the sector offered and also to turn ECEL into an integrated player with strengths in all segments of construction equipment,” Mr Sharma told Business Line here.

The agreement signed with Altec will allow ECEL to bring in a host of equipment to serve the power network maintenance business, which promises to grow fast in India.

With projected addition of 1,00,000 mw power capacity, power utilities will find maintenance easier with these latest equipment, which do not need power shutdown, he explained.

ECEL, which has a total capacity of manufacturing 5,000 equipments per year, hopes to expand to a capacity of 15,000 equipment per year once the two new plants are completed, Mr Sharma, who was here to launch the company’s first crawler crane, said.

Exports soon

On the company’s own growth, he said Escorts TRX 2319, largest PickNCarry crane in the world, would be exported soon.

“We are discussing with an Australian buyer (I cannot disclose name now), who has shown interest to buy 100 units in the first year,” he said.

The company sold the first machine to the Lanco Group recently. ECEL is geared up to tap opportunities being thrown up by the growth of infrastructure and real estate sectors, he added.

According to industry estimates the construction and earth moving equipment industry is at around Rs 9,000 crore and expected to grow to about Rs 40,000 crore by the year 2015.

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