Sany: Looking to Unfold Business Potential

Relatively a new entrant in crane business in India, Sany is positive to reap rich dividends offered by Indian construction sector. The Chinese construction equipment conglomerate sees good demand for its crawler lattice boom crane from upcoming industrial and core construction projects in years to come. The company expects demand based on its ability to offer quality products backed by sound customer support.

"Ever since our entry in the Indian construction market in 2006, followed by setting up of our own subsidiary ‘Sany Heavy Industry India Private Limited,’ business has been good so far for our crawler cranes. We are much positive for volumes to grow based on firm demand fundamentals," says Mr. Richard Deng, Managing Director, Sany Heavy Industry India. He informs, "crawler cranes sold by us with a range of 50-70, 80-100, 150-300 and 630 tons have been imported from China and we have sold two hundreds units so far.

Sany foresees future business potential from demand of heavy capacity cranes. It is quite encouraging to see that demand is shifting towards heavy capacity cranes in India ranging from 350 to 600 tons led bigger project sizes. We have been able to tap the emerging demand by selling seven 300 tons capacity cranes in the last six months apart from two 630 ton to a rental company last year," says Mr. Deng.

However, importing makes the cranes expensive for Sany to sell and this is when other Chinese manufacturers are tapping the market with pricewise competitive products offering. Mr. Deng says, "I want to mention that we offer premium products which are at least 20% costwise dearer than products made available by our Chinese competitors in China as well as in India. By retaining our premium position, we look forward to have a decent market share. We are also trying to make our products cost competitive by replacing the imports with indigenization of the cranes at our newly set up plant in Pune."

The company will initially start assembling cranes with the capacities of 80-100-150-250-300 tons while the assembling of 600-650 tons crane will take place in later stages depending on market demand." "We’ll launch our first local manufactured Crawler Crane by the end of this year," says Mr. Deng.

Competitive pricing is also much in focus by Sany. Relatively a new entrant in India’s crane market, Sany will focus on localization to bring down price of its products to cater to local customers need. Mr. Deng says, "localization is much important for us. As of now, cranes manufactured in India will continue to have at least 95% of its parts of imported origin with engine from Deutz US and Isuzu Japan, hydraulics from Rexroth and Kawasaki, electronics from Vikers US in order to retain the quality feature of the machinery which enable us to provide high equipment uptime to customers." However, bulk item like counterweight, boom structures will be sourced from local vendors. Further, indigenization will be carried in stages.

Sany plans to retain and expand its market presence in India by offering competitive customer services. According to Mr. Deng, "We intend to score over other manufacturers by offering value added services to our customers and with a view to perform well, we have acquired maintenance vehicles loaded with tools required for maintenance. Service engineers accompanying the vehicles, will assist customers to undertake preventive maintenance. Besides, our service engineers will also visit customers to provide maintenance support free of cost. We will provide optimum customer support through our pan India presence in 17 locations both in metro and non metro cities and 13 warehouses.