At Kobelco Cranes, safety is a major focus not only in the design stage but also throughout the lifecycle of cranes. Takeshi Miyashita, Director - Sales & Marketing, Kobelco, says that his company does not have a dealer-based business model and their engineers directly service the customers. Excerpts of the interview.

What is the current market trend in the crawler crane segment?
The market for crawler cranes has been flat for over two years. There are no big projects happening either in power or industrial and manufacturing segments. This has impacted the sales of crawler cranes. However, on a long-term perspective, India is a market with immense potential for construction, and lifting and loading equipment. We expect the market to bounce back from the last quarter of 2014. Recently, the Project Monitoring Group (PMG) has cleared power projects worth Rs 3 lakh crore. This move might provide the much-required boost to the crawlers? segment.

Are you planning to introduce higher capacity crawlers to the Indian market?
In India, Kobelco is currently manufacturing three models - 100T, 150T, and 260T. At present, we want to concentrate only on these models.

What is the demand-supply scenario for the range of crawler that Kobelco deals with in India?
In India, the highly used variant of crawler crane is 80 T, whereas our range starts from 100 T. We have positioned our range in this segment and our competition is with these conventional models. We are confident that the customers will appreciate the advantages of using our range instead of depending on these conventional models, which are far less productive. We will be able to garner a good share of the market in the segment we are focusing now.

Brief us on the safety features of these cranes.
At Kobelco, safety is a major focus not only in the design stage but throughout the lifecycle of cranes. Moreover, we do not have a dealer-based business model and our engineers, who are well qualified and trained, directly service the customers. We take complete responsibility of the machine. We also have focused training programmes, class room training and on-site training, wherein we educate our operators and technicians and instil in them a safety consciousness. We have set high standards for service.

What is current market scenario of rental for crawlers?
We are not into rentals directly, but have customers from the hiring and rental segment. Lack of projects has impacted the rental rates. The hiring and rental segment is not in a good position.

In terms of tracking and control systems, what are the latest technologies that Kobelco has to offer?
We have introduced tracking system in our range of crawler cranes for remote monitoring. In fact, we have already supplied few machines with the tracking system installed; however, it is still in the testing stage. We need to see its usage by the owner and the cost factor before giving it as a standard fitment in our range of crawlers.

Is import of used crawlers still an issue in India?
Import of used crawlers is not worth as we have high import duties in India.