ICEMA together with the Ministry of Heavy Industry is setting up a national testing facility. It?s a very wise step and this will definitely help to maintain maximum safety for men and machines, says Rajeev Kumar, CEO, Friends Equipment. Excerpts from the interview...

How do you assess the current market for tyre-mounted cranes and crawlers of various capacities?
The current market for the truck cranes has already improved specially in the segment of 75T to 120T. We are also seeing the growth in the crawler crane segment in the capacity between 100T to 260T segment, mainly the petrochemical industries, metro projects, power plants etc, are the major growth drivers.

In India, the demand for higher capacity cranes is very less. The major market for these cranes is wind mill projects, petrochemical industries, and power plants. As big projects are yet to be announced, the growth in this sector will be very slow in this year.

How do you foresee the growth demand by 2017?
Yes, with this new stable government, we are looking for big projects in power sector. The coal allocation has already been started now and we hope by the end of this year, we except some new big launch in power sector. The growth demand by 2017 will be almost three times from now.

Brief us on the product offerings from your stable.
We are offering the wide range of truck cranes, all-terrain cranes, rough terrain cranes and crawler cranes. In truck cranes, we have 12T to 220T (biggest in the world) and in all terrain cranes, we have options from 150T to 2,000T (again biggest in the world). We are offering 35T to 100T in rough-terrain cranes and in the crawler cranes, we have capacity range from 55T to 3,200T.

Brief us on the value additions offered by your company in your range of products and services?
We offer wide range of products and the same will be supported with our best after-sales service and the easy and fast availability of spare parts. We have our own warehouse in Mumbai and Jamnagar backed up with our qualified service engineers. Apart from this, we provide operation and maintenance services to all types of equipment supplied by us to our clients.

What sort of demand pull you anticipate from the hiring segment?
The maximum demand in mid-segment is for 55T to 100T in truck cranes and 75T to 260T in case of crawler cranes.

UNIQUE FEATURES

• The light-heavy combination boom can achieve a longer boom and lower the customers? buying costs
• The super-strong hoisting capacity and boom combination mode can make the product adaptable to a wider range of construction environment
• The real-time centroid detection function and precision torque limiter can effectively ensure the customers? safety during operation
• The self-detachment function of the complete vehicle and the set transport function of the boom frame can greatly reduce the transport costs and effectively improve the installation efficiency during site changes.
• The promotion targeting such working conditions as subway, thermal power, chemical industry and steel mill construction can effectively enhance the leading advantages of QUY260 among its peers
• The humanized intelligent design can fully meet the ergonomic demands
• Mature and reliable supporting assembly configuration can achieve high cost performance
• Completely self-detachable ability
• Power hinge pins are used to connect the boom section and the rotating table, as well as the frame and the crawler frame, featuring simple, convenient and fast manipulation of lower labor intensity
• The hydraulic system adopts the world advanced pump control system, with the main components imported from Germany to achieve higher efficiency, lower energy consumption, higher reliability and longer service life