Liugong India Motor Graders: Productivity in Construction & Mining
Nischal Mehrotra, Senior Vice President, Liugong India
The sound business fundamentals offer good scope for sales of motor graders across varied segments. We will be strengthening our motor graders by increasing their horsepower for enhanced application in construction and mining sectors and to meet demand in the rental segment of users. This will give us a competitive edge in the market.
Presently, we are offering 180-220 HP graders that are highly suitable for road construction projects as well as for mining jobs. They are fitted with Ashok Leyland electronic engine, as per the new emission norms. We will soon be coming up with a 160HP motor grader targeted at rental companies and sub-contractors. It will be an advanced version of the (now discontinued) 150HP and will be fitted with a Cummins engine. For mining applications, we will be introducing 260 HP motor graders, which will be (initially) imported from China, and later we will do reverse engineering to make them suitable for Indian job conditions.
Our marketing strategy is to have a strong presence in the motor grader market for which we will reinforce our brand value to garner repeat sales. We will do this not through outright sales of our machines but by demonstrating to potential customers their productivity in terms of cubic meters vis a vis competing brands. In fact, in most of the projects where our machines have been deployed, they have delivered high levels of productivity.
We have done some value engineering in our graders, such as improving the blade design, making the structure more robust, and strengthening the components etc. We have also enhanced our customer support by extending the warranty periods from the earlier 3000 hours to 5000 hours and also extending the credit limit for our customers.