AKSH has a vision to become the leading Indian manufacturer of slew ring bearings with world-class engineering and product quality. Pratik Gokhale, Director - Sales and Marketing, AKSH Manufacturing Pvt Ltd, elaborates on the company's presence in the market and future plans.

What are the types of bearings for construction equipment applications?
We design and manufacture slew ring bearings for various application including construction equipment. We have our own technology for spacer-less cross-roller slew ring bearing, for which patent is applied. Within AKSH, we have our separate division focusing on design, R&D and manufacturing of slew ring bearings at our Pune factory. Our design department is headed by a person who has an experience of 15 years in a famous multinational company.

How do bearings help in prolonged life of equipment?
AKSH slew bearings are engineered to deliver long service with high precision. Case hardened material with specially designed bearing races and unique spacer-less criss-cross technology with super precision rollers guarantees increased load capacity and low co-efficient of friction.

We expect regular lubrication for bearings with recommended grade of grease and within recommended number of cycles or time span. We expect bearing life of minimum seven years with proper maintenance. However, life of bearings is surely more than that.

At AKSH, we help customers to get the lubrication done, if they request. This is something EXTRA we do for the customer.

What are your latest product ranges for construction equipment?
We have around 100 units of standard variants for AKSH slew ring bearings including without gear and with external or internal gear. We manufacture bearings of outer diameter ranging from 120 mm to 1,500 mm.

Apart from standard set of bearings, we do customisation based on specific requirement of customer as we have our own technology. We do 40 per cent business in customised slew bearings. We will be shortly introducing our range of high performance slew drives with minimum 50 units of standard variants.

What are the innovations in your range of bearings that extend life of bearings?
We have developed space-less slew bearings. This itself is the biggest innovation in slew bearings. It is 100 per cent metallic bearings without any kind of polymer material within. We follow high grade of quality standards, right from material selection, manufacturing process and inspection.

What is the current market trend for bearings in India? What are the growth opportunities from CE market?
We see a lot of opportunities in the current and future construction equipment markets in India. Many government and private construction projects are on the mark to start, a few are even started. Based on the latest reports, Central Government is making roads at a rate of about 23 km/day while the target is to construct 41 km/day. This situation is surely a positive sign for this market. This is really good sign of growth for component manufacturers of construction equipment sector.

The slew bearing market has opened up for India and will sustain for a long time. We expect a business growth of 15-20 per cent (YoY basis) for next five years.

What are the challenges faced by bearings market?
We work hard for product quality and never compromise on the same. It obviously attracts some cost. We have never been a competitor to Chinese slew ring bearings. The challenge for slew bearings is extremely low priced Chinese products. Unfortunately, some customers select the bearings based on short-term advantage of price and not comparing product quality and long life of the bearings.

How do you look at the future demand for bearings from construction equipment market?
We look forward for getting associated with major players in construction equipment segment, especially in truck cranes and aerial work platforms. Demand in these two equipment segments is increasing drastically, in the current Indian market scenario.

What are your expansion plans?
We treat every customer as business partners and all our synergies are focused on top notch quality of product, on-time delivery, design and service support, and customer satisfaction. By 2025, we will have our own complete facility for all kind of slew bearings up to the size of 4,000 mm, right from forging to hard chrome plating for our slew ring bearings.