India-made Liebherr truck mixer soon

FOR MANY INDIANS, the name Liebherr brings up visions of large yellow-and-grey mobile cranes. These mammoth lifters may be emblematic of this family-owned Swiss-headquartered conglomerate, but it is also a big name in construction machines.

Liebherr is well-known in the power, industrial, construction, and port sectors in India, where its tower cranes, industrial handlers, concrete batching plants, and harbour mobile cranes are now a common sight.

The group will be out in force at the bCIndia show at Mumbai’s Bandra–Kurla Complex Feb 8-11 and among the Liebherr wheel loaders and excavators on display will be a 10m3 concrete mixer drum mounted on an MAN CLA 31.280 chassis.

This product will roll out from its Indian subsidiary Liebherr CMCtec India’s new factory being built near Pune in Q2 of 2011. The mixer is built of LH37 steel, a grade with a higher carbon content than those offered by all other competitors in India, including its German rival Schwing Stetter. The superior abrasion-resistance of the steel makes the mixer a more economical proposition for even smaller customers as it allows them to use their drums for much longer.

According to managing director Pulok Gupta Leibherr’s real USP is the way its mixers are mounted on the truck chassis without channels in between the chassis frame and the mixer subframe that all other manufacturers in India use. Gupta says this makes the truck mixer unsafe for driving and causes discomfort to the driver.

Instead, Liebherr provides a bigger drum subframe. Another important safety feature unique to Liebherr truck mixers in India is the anticlockwise rotation of the drum, specific to right-hand-drive markets, which when loaded moves the weight of the concrete to the left to stabilise the truck when turning to the right at speed.

As a result of India's construction and road-building boom, the Liebherr mixer should rake in good numbers