Chinese construction equipment major Sunward discloses long-term India plans

Chinese construction equipment manufacturer Sunward, which joined hands with Indian conglomerate ACE in 2018 for its foundation equipment, plans to extend its presence in the Indian market. ACE, the exclusive Indian distributor for Sunward piling rigs is providing sales, after sales service at jobsites, technical support and spare parts, while the ACE engineers are being trained by Sunward in all these aspects. Seeing the robust demand for its products and strong fundamentals of India’s infra sector, the company is also mulling a subsidiary in India for all its product ranges and a manufacturing facility in partnership with a local partner in the near future.


Sharing the company’s India plans for the next 2-3 years, He Qing Hua, Chairman, Sunward Intelligent Equipment Group, said, “We entered the Indian market about 10 years ago but were unable to make much progress, but right now our machines are showing high performance having partnered with ACE, so, for the next few years we will focus on expanding our product range including TBM, all series of excavators and rock drilling machines in Indian market. For providing services in more convenient way, the Indian subsidiary of Sunward will start its localization operation in the first half of 2020, in which way, Sunward will able to provide overall training courses towards end-users, as well as more comprehensive and convenient after-sales and spare parts service towards products together with our dealer. In fact, the Indian market is going to be our focus for the next few years, and we will strategically invest in introducing our wide product range of equipment in the country. We are also looking at the possibility of setting up a manufacturing facility, which clearly assures our Indian buyers of our long-term commitment to the Indian market.”


Sunward, which is one of China’s largest equipment manufacturer of Excavators, Piling Rigs, Shotcreting machines, tunneling machines, Drill Jumbos etc, is confident of selling more machines in India in view of the wide scope for infrastructure development across the country, including highways, ports, tunnels, hydropower, metro rails etc. Quite understandably, Sunward is keen to invest in India and is analyzing the market closely. It is also keen to find the right partner who has the same business ideas and plans as theirs. The company is considering the Chennai Industrial zone or Pune for setting up a factory where it plans to produce all its products, if possible. “In the coming years, we will try to expand our product line and will introduce our rock drills, TBMs and excavators. Once we have set up a complete sales and aftersales network, we will consider local production in partnership with a local partner,” emphasized the company‘s chairman.


He informed that Chinese brands today have 60-65% share of the market in China, which was not the case ten years ago when international brands were selling more. “So, we believe, that the same will happen in India as the country has the capability for good production and the reason why we prefer to have a local partner for production. This will create a win-win situation for both sides.”