NAWA Engineers, a relatively young company, has established its credentials well in crushing, screening, material handling, and aggregate plant segment. What are the latest technological developments worldwide in this segment and how these are being incorporated in Nawa product range to deliver technological superior and cost effective construction/ aggregate equipment product range?
Rocks remained as rocks since civilizations. They are the oldest and durable building materials in various forms – natural or mended. They have not changed. What has changed is demand for sizes and gradations of crushed rock to meet modern construction specifications. These pose challenge to the crusher equipment manufacturers all over the world to produce them all in one go. Though it is not going to happen ever, aggregate crushers have come a long way to go nearer and nearer to the aggregate specifications.
NAWA keeps abreast with the latest developments and innovations in the crushing and screening equipment. The Nawa jaw crushers, who are primary crushing machines, are world class with latest developments. They incorporate quick–setting adjustment to maximize productivity. The innovations and accuracies in crushing geometry make Nawa jaws more productive – higher crushing ratio, increased output and less wear.
Many developments have taken place in cone crushers, which are secondary/tertiary crushing machines. They changed from mechanical to hydraulic operation. The long and steep crushing
chambers have been dwarfed to make them short head and compact, and to give material more attrition time in the crushing chamber. The result is a better shape and well dispersed gradation to the crushed aggregates. Frictionless roller bearings have replaced bush bearings to save on energy per ton of crushing. Nawa hydraulic cone crushers are built with all these innovations. They are energy efficient, deliver high output and meant to convert hard and abrasive Indian rocks to well-graded cubical products.
For meeting the stringent quality and gradation profile of aggregates for highway construction, as crushed sand usage and for pumped concrete requirements, one needs to pass the material through a third stage crushing and shaping machine. The contractors and quarry owners over the World found that the Vertical Shaft Impact (VSI) crusher is the only machine, which would remove all their owes in delivering high standard aggregates. The Nawapactor VSI, which works on free-impact rockon- rock principle, incorporates the world-class features is best indigenous solution – frictionless bearings, low energy costs, low running costs, high productivity – to all our customers.
Where are Nawa Engineers factories manufacturing these equipment are located and what is Nawa's complete product range?
Technocrat driven medium and small engineering enterprises do exist with adequate skills and machining facilities in Hyderabad, which provide necessary ancillary support for heavy machine building activity like ours. This is an advantage one gets when located in a big city where industrial infrastructure has already been in position.
Our product range covers – Primary single toggle jaw crushers from 60- 600 tph; Hydraulic cone crushers for secondary and tertiary application from 60-200 tph; Secondary gyratorycone crushers from 150-300 tph; Vertical shaft impact (VSI) crushers from 25-350 tph; Vibrating equipment – grizzlies and screens of varied sizes and capacities; Spiral classifiers from 300 mm to 2400 mm diameter to wash and classify 15- 350 tph; Fixed plants from 50-350 tph; Mobile tyre mounted primary jaw, secondary cone and tertiary VSI stations from 90-250 tph; Belt conveyors of all sizes and capacities for bulk handling; Concrete delivery and placement conveyor systems for dam construction- capacity 1000 tph and above.
Recently, Nawa has launched Nawa mobile stations—tell us something about the plant and what has been the market response?
We have added crusher mobile stations to our product portfolio. These were displayed in Excon— 2005 exhibition held in December 2005, at Bangalore. The response from users was very encouraging. Our quality and configurations have received wide appreciation from the users as well as multinational suppliers. We are fortunate to convert quite a few of enquiries into orders. The customers have reposed lot of trust in our abilities and skills.
Nawa mobiles are multi-axle chassis mounted on pneumatic tyres. They are designed to provide maximum mobility and optimum flexibility to the quarry, highways and contracting companies for processing large volumes of road base materials, river gravel or mineral ores. They are road going in fully assembled state, both on paved roads as well as mining tracks, true to our slogan “Nawa Mobiles – Truly Mobile,” driven by standard trailer prime-over vehicles.
Our mobile range includes: a) Jaw stations for 125-300 TPH b) Cone stations for 70-250 TPH and c) VSI stations for 100-250 TPH. All of the mare equipped with Nawa’s proven equipment – grizzly feeder, jawcrusher, cone crusher, VSI crusher and vibrating screens.
What are Nawa's pre- and postsales technical services, including spare part supply services to sustain customer reliance in Nawa?
We find both pre- and post-sales technical support and service to the customer as the most important things, more so to the aggregate producers. Most of them need a thorough analysis of their quarry logistics and aggregate requirements, and look for assistance in zeroing on to a technically the best flow design and selection of right equipment, and cost wise the most economical. We give utmost importance to this presales assistance, and our marketing and application engineers do thorough study and provide the user with selection of right system and equipment solutions.
We experience most complex and difficult pre-sales tasks in upgradation and modernization schemes of existing aggregate crushing plants. The tasks are most challenging and we take them up with a pride. This is a win over act of our marketing and sales team, who puts in an honest and sincere effort in guiding the customer.
We have a full-fledged service and parts department. Our after-salesengineers are constantly in touch with the users giving guidance and advice on proper operation and maintenance of our equipment. That goes with good business for spare parts. The aggregate business is parts-intensive, more so when your machines are located in abrasive rock zones. Besides periodic change of parts, emergencies occur resulting stoppage of production. We maintain adequate inventories and supply the parts on quick-delivery basis. We continually advice the user what insurance spares he should keep to cater to the emergencies so as to prevent downtime and reduce production loss.
Regular visits are planned by our service engineers to the users’ installations to keep abreast with he health of our equipment, and to keep a track of its deliverance. It helps us to continually improve our machine design for better performance.
Nawa offers complete plants and upgradations on turnkey or semiturnkey basis. So far how many plants have been set up in different parts of the country?
In our existence of five years of operations in the field of crushing, screening, material handling, and aggregate plants, Nawa has designed and installed more than 60 installations. They include complete 3-stage and 2-stage crushing plants, both fixed and mobile, washing and manufactured sand plants for national highway projects, state road projects, dam projects, commercial aggregate production and mineral re crushing. Our installations are spread all over India, and are in operation and being serviced by us in the harshest tracts of Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Bhutan, Jammu & Kashmir, and almost all other states in the North, South, West and East. For our erection crews and service teams, there are no geographical restrictions, and we love to set up our plants wherever they are required and whatever the terrain is.
Besides aggregate crusher plants, we have successfully undertaken from concept to commissioning of concrete delivery and placement systems for the first time in thecountry. We designed, installed, and are presently operating 1000 tons per hour RCC delivery system for Patel Engineering at Ghatghar HEP, Maharashtra. The system was designed to place roller compacted concrete from zero to 80 m level of the dam, and delivered 4.5 lakh cubic meters of concrete in just two dry seasons between December–May. The concrete delivery touched 70,000 cu.m per month during the peak season.
What are your views on the budget as related to construction equipment sector and your wish list for the benefit of industry?
Our budgets in post-liberalization era were never pro-indigenous machine developers or heavy engineering industry. Our tax regulators’ priorities have been on import duty concessions, and meet the deficit revenue by higher taxation on domestic production. Now a construction company, when he buys equipment from a domestic supplier, should pay VAT at 12.5%. If he imports the same equipment, he need not to pay any sales tax or VAT. The sales tax being a state subject, there was never a thought given in the central budget to safe guard the interests of indigenous manufacturers the price disadvantage he faces against overseas supplier on this count. It is not fair that lawmakers should introduce a levy on imports, similar to countervailing duty in lieu of xcise duty, to equalize effect of VAT leading to a level of field of competition. There is no scope for construction companies to take value addition set off in their production activities. Hence 12.5% is a huge cost that the user incurs when he buys indigenous equipment compared to imported equipment, putting indigenous manufacturer at great disadvantage.
There are duty-free concessions given to construction companies when they import certain types of equipment for notified infrastructure projects like highway construction. For example, cone crushers for aggregate crushing can be imported duty free irrespective of source of funding, either funded by World Bank/ADB or internal resources, for the highway projects. Should not GOI levy countervailing duty in lieu of excise duty on such equipment as a fair deal to the domestic manufacturers? An indigenous manufacturer when he sells a cone crusher to same highway project, he would pay the exchequer 16% as excise duty and 2% as educational cess. I wish, and it is only fair that the Finance Ministry would consider waiving the excise duty on such indigenous equipment supplied to notified projects for which they have granted exemption of hundred percent of import levies. Or FM should consider a levy of countervailing duty in lieu of excise duty on duty-free import list and only allow exemption on basic duty.
What is Nawa’s future plans?
We are very quality conscious, and are thriving to achieve quality standards followed by advanced countries. We have achieved a great deal on this count. There is still much to improve on quality. Our immediate future plan is to achieve this quality goal.
In the nearest future the plans are to expand our product applications to metallic and non-metallic minerals, beyond the hard rock crushing wherein, we are presently serving construction and quarry sectors.
We are looking for some export opportunities. There is good market response from the Asian neighboring countries and the African nations, and our exploration is on.
