What is range of tower cranes currently manufactured by ACE in India?
We strongly believe in ?Make in India,? and have our own research and development team which has given various innovative solutions for Indian customers. We supply tower cranes for real estate buildings, factories, bridges, power plants, hydro electric projects, dams, refineries, etc, for lifting steel, concrete and other building materials. We offer a wide range of tower cranes in the Indian market from 1.6T to 25T. We manufacture tower cranes from 18 m of jib length up to 70 m and offer end-to-end solution to local customers. We are market leaders in tower crane segment in India. Our market share has been growing steadily with the introduction of new models over a period of time.

Brief us on the product and technology trends?
We offer self-erecting and fixed tower cranes. Self-erecting cranes are generally of smaller capacities and can work for buildings up to 10-12 floors, beyond which fixed tower cranes are used. Flat top cranes generally do not give any benefit over CAT-head cranes. Only advantage comes if cranes have to work in confined space, one over the other.

But for those, luffing cranes become a better solution.
Luffing cranes can easily work in close proximity of existing buildings or if a number of tower cranes are working closely. These cranes are application-specific and because of their price, are used only when other options are not possible. We have started offering luffing cranes for our local customers.

Brief us on the major trends with regard to safety, ease of operation and maintenance?
Safety is of prime importance with respect to installation, operation, height increase/decrease etc of a tower crane. We would request all users to take note of this very important aspect of tower crane usage as otherwise it can lead to major accidents.cv We provide all possible safety features in tower cranes like limit switches for trolley, hoisting, slew functions, overload and movement limiters with alarm and cut-off in case of unsafe/overload operations. We also offer Safe Load Indicators (SLI) along with automatic cut-off optionally as and when required.

Our engineers and technicians have been trained adequately to ensure proper working and calibration of these safety devices and as a practice; we try and check the completeness and proper working of these devices on every visit to the machine site(s). But, we feel that the most important factor is a good, trained operator and precisely because of this we have started a well-equipped training centre at Faridabad to provide operation and maintenance training to our customer?s personnel.

What are your views on the import of tower cranes?
We believe in offering locally manufactured tower cranes for Indian market. With introduction of wide range of ?Make In India? tower cranes from us, the dependence of customers on imported cranes has come down drastically, which is quite visible with the drop in imported tower cranes numbers over a period of time. Actually it becomes very difficult to maintain and service imported tower cranes. Further, if customer gets a reliable local alternative why they should look for imported tower cranes. We feel proud to be the market leader in spite of presence of many global players in Indian market.

How important is the presence of an ?equipment consultant??
ACE believes in offering our customers with complete solution and our engineers closely interact with customers at every stage of building construction till the tower crane is properly dismantled at the site. We will follow our philosophy of working closely with customers and offering world class solutions at reasonable price, in future also.

What is your future outlook with regard to tower cranes market?
Tower crane market is expected to grow by 15-20 per cent in the year if the economic scenario improves as expected.

We offer Safe Load Indicators (SLI) along with automatic cut-off optionally as and when required.