On A Bigger Footprint
Built involving a capital investment of over $20 million, Powerscreen's new plant at Hosur is key to its growth in India. The Ireland based company has set a target to attain a forty percent market share in mining and construction aggregate crushing and screening market in India by 2013, thereby increasing its revenue share from Indian operations. Presently, as per Powerscreen its total market share, is over 30%.
"Our new greenfield facility at Hosur will be the growth and business consolidation instrument for future in India. Well laid production and business development blueprint has been put in place to monetize the facility," mentions Mr. Patrick Brian.
He elaborates, "our future expectations from the new facility are immense. I see Hosur adding value to Powerscreen's Indian and global operation in number of phases and become a single large manufacturing facility in the coming years. In phase one, the facility will consolidate the position of Powerscreen in the Indian mining segment. During the second phase, it will give us a strong opportunity to penetrate in the construction sector. This we have not been able to do from Europe to date. Access to the construction aggregate sector will in turn add a big value to our Indian operations. During phase three, Hosur will be used as regional hub. This will not only allow the company to tap the domestic Indian market in a big way but also markets in Asia, Middle East and Africa." For the Ireland based company, India is in the slot of top five global crushing and screening markets.
According to Mr. Brian, "production enhancement down till 2013 will be carried with an additional capital investment. This will be approximately to the tune of 3-5 million dollars." The future investment will be towards introduction of new models. This will involve investments towards making advancements in manufacturing and production line.
Focus on Vendor Development
The phase wise target to enhance production levels would be ensured through products indigenization. In accordance with this, Powerscreen will extensively focus on vendor development of its crushing and screening unit. It has targeted to procure at least eighty percent of components from local suppliers and would be obtaining components from vendors located within 300 kilometres radius of Hosur. As per Mr. Brian, "we would look to indigenize as many as components as possible, with the exception of engines and crusher chambers. However, with production gaining ground, this may change in the coming years." Powerscreen currently manufactures crusher chambers both in Europe and Malaysia. Malaysia is the regional hub for crusher chambers. Power- screen has manufacturing facilities in 40 countries across the world.
Desired quality and pricing of the products procured from local vendors and timely delivery will be ensured through Powerscreen's vendor assessment programme. Based on the programme, we are carefully selecting our vendors in Southern India, Mr. Brian added.
Sustained improvement in the components quality will be ensured through the introduction of 'vendor improvement programmes' as used for vendors in Terex's other global manufacturing facility. In sync with this, Terex will pass on to vendors quality improvement techniques gathered from its other manufacturing facilities across the world.
Well Placed Customer Support
Powerscreen is essentially a distribution driven company for its sales and customer support. It would lay focus on product distribution through selection of right dealers for market leading customer support and service.
According to Mr. Brian, "having the right dealer and distribution network is the key area of focus for Terex. Distribution tie up is important for being closer to the users. During selection we focus on dealers who either have or are willing to put in resource specifically for crushers and screening customers. We refrain from taking interest in dealers who have broad knowledge on the equipment. On the contrary what we look is specialization in the equipment."
Powerscreen would look to make the distribution tie up well forged with the dealers. Mr. Brian says, "we have four extremely strong distributors. They have adequate market knowledge. However, the bigger intention is to pass value to customers on a sustainable basis through our dealership development programme." "We have a set of measures as matrix. This we place upon a dealer and we work them to make sure, they continually improve their performances against those measures. To support the improvement of the dealers, we have introduced ongoing training programme at Hosur similar to our factories in Europe. Training to the dealers in India would be provided to become specialized and well equipped. This is so as to ensure better value added service to customers."
Focus on Mobility & Solutions
All said but it would be actually the product line that would drive sales for Powerscreen. Mobility is the main competitive element for Powerscreen to drive its growth in India. As per Mr. Brian, "based on our product competence, our focus is very much on the mobile segment for our business promotion. What we want to offer the customers is crushing and screening machines which have maximum operating flexibility and mobility. We started our approach by targeting the iron ore mining segment where we pioneered the mobile concept but our push in the next few years, with our facility full stream, will be pushing the mobile concept into the construction and aggregate markets." Road construction and rental would be the potential markets for Powerscreen in construction sector.
According to Mr. Brian, "our machines are mobile to the core as being on tracks supported by hydraulics. This is in contrast to semi mobile machines on wheels with minimal mobility." Emerging trend in the Indian crushing and screening market is the transition from wheeled to tracked plants similar to Europe and US. He says, "exactly that is the emerging trend we are looking to take advantage of. There is a demand of bigger machines screens on tracks. Going by the trend, we will see penetration of bigger tracked machines in the static market."
Powerscreens crushers are from 250 TPH to 750 TPH. The higher capacity crushers in due course of time will be made in India.
At par with banking on mobility feature to make business grow, Powerscreen will also look to tap the solutions market. Mr. Brian informed, "we have a sister business unit in Terex called Terex Mineral Processing Systems. The unit will start manufacturing of machines later this year in Hosur. It will seek to fulfill requirement of customers having solution based demand. The sister concern will share a same distribution channel as Powerscreen. This will give the customers a wide possible choice based on the demand involving tracked mobile plant, powerscreen option or overall plant solution."
However, apart from competitive product line and services, it is the continuous improvement in products based on customer feedback, that will consolidate Powerscreens market position in India. According to Mr. Brian, "listening carefully to the voice of the customers is a critical part of our research and development programme. This would be significant for making engineering modifications in our new models." Based on the feedback received, Powerscreen would look to introduce crushing and screening machines that give high equipment uptime and productivity, machines that are easy to maintain and service, and low on cost of ownership. All to pass on value to the customers.
NBMCW July 2010
