
Technical alliances are once again gaining grounds among equipment manufacturers at an heightened pace. This is largely due to increased demand for newer and advanced solutions for emerging job site requirements. Demand potential for newer equipment is added reasons for collaborations.
From business perspective, the fast emerging competition is making equipment manufacturers focused on point of convergence backed by technical pacts. From revenue point of view, under point of convergence, a single equipment manufacturer can make available assorted equipment and solutions to contractors to cater to varied construction requirements. Product solutions backed by engineering support, can also be made available to other equipment manufacturers for carrying out product advancements.
Backed by the business perspective, VECV-50-50 joint venture between Volvo & Eicher motors, has made an investment of Rs.2,880 million on the Medium Duty Engine Project (MDEP). The project will undertake production and final assembly of Volvo Group's new global medium duty engines. The investment was made during the year 2010 by Volvo at Eicher's Pithampur plant. According to a recent release of the company, "the investment will give the entity a complete facility in India to manufacture and assemble new medium duty engine which will be introduced in Volvo group's trucks and buses division worldwide in the next few years. Additionally, these engines will be used for Eicher's range of heavy duty commercial vehicles in India."
The release says, "the MDEP facility is one of the largest and technologically most advanced, capable of producing base engines for Euro-6 emission norms." The engine facility at Pithampur is likely to be commissioned early next year.

VECV under its joint venture has also set up Eicher Engineering Components division with production facilities in Thane and Dewas (Madhya Pradesh), which manufactures crown wheels, pinions, transmission gears and shafts. VECV components division caters to the components requirements of Volvo trucks and also for other OEM's.
To cater the growing requirement of equipment prototype, VECV has also set up Eicher Engineering Solutions Wing (EESW) at Gurgaon near Delhi which provides comprehensive product development services, comprising Class A surfacing, CAD, CAE prototyping. The revenue streams of EESW are catering to the requirements of VECV and other organic business and offshoring.
Volvo trucks have presence in niche construction market bearing capacity from 14-49 tons. Eicher caters to the mass construction materials haulage market from 5-40 tons.
Advanced Solutions
For advanced crushing solutions and to manufacture new line of mobile crushers, Proman Infrastructure Services Limited has entered into a technical collaboration with Tesab Engineering Limited of Ireland.
"Technologically, the crushers would be superior and can be operated continuously at mining sites and big infrastructure projects. The machines will be cost competitive to operate as well. The tracked crushers will be coming with Caterpillar power pack and equipped with a large rear loading hopper with low feed in height and hydraulic adjusting crusher. The wheeled crushers are self-contained mobile units with a Caterpillar power pack as well," he said.
Mr. Raghavan added, "Proman has been able to add value to its stationary plants through technical collaboration with Lippman, Ortner, Finedoor and Remco. The collaborations have enabled us to manufacture the units in India rather importing them, thus making the products price competitive. Further, alliances have added value through regular induction of latest technologies in our plants. This has resultantly enabled Proman offer world-class products to our customers.

PROMAN manufactures Vertical Shaft Impact Crushers in collaboration with M/s REMco. As per the company, PROMAN-REMco machines produce cubical, well-graded, sound, mid-range aggregates, specification sand and other fine sizes."
In collaboration with LIPPMANN of the USA, PROMAN manufactures heavy duty primary Jaw Crushers under technical collaboration with Lippman US. The jaw crushers have the capacity to produce 100 to 500 tons per hour of aggregates . The company manufactures PROcone a cone crushers for secondary and tertiary crushing. Technical alliance with Finedoor of UK is for manufacturing grizzly feeders.
PROMAN also in collaboration with M/s Aggregate Equipment Industries, USA manufactures the unique Ortner for the removal of fines from the product available from crushers. Mr. Raghavan informs, "PROMAN has flexibility in the form of PROMO series mobile crusher and PROMAN-Striker range of Tracked Machines."
He mentiones, "collaborations give us special edge also when it comes to give services to our customers. Proman provides after sales service for all our products be it stationary, mobile or turnkey plants backed by advanced engineering expertise."


REL construction equipment division offers full liner concrete equipment with technical collaboration from German manufacturers. The company's ISO certified production facility is located at Gummidipoondi, near Chennai. REL started its operations in Coimbatore in 1978 where it has its manufacturing facility for mining equipment.



