Escorts targets top-end tractor market, launches 60 and 65hp Farmtrac range

Escorts Agri Machinery has launched its ‘executive’ tractor aimed at the growing market that demands higher horsepower tractors. The Farmtrac 6060 and 6065 will cater to the sharp end of a market that sells close to 525,000 tractors a year. The tractors will be manufactured with 100 percent localisation at Escorts’ Faridabad plant. The plant, which has a production capacity of 100,000 tractors per annum, made around 70,000 tractors last year.

Escorts has targeted sales of 10,000 Farmtrac by the end of 2013. The 6060 and 6065 models come in six variants and pack quite a lot of technology. A four-cylinder turbocharged intercooler along with an inline fuel pump and four-wheel drive finds its way on the top-end model, while the low-end model does without the four-wheel-drive system.

The Indian tractor market is estimated at 500,000 units per annum and sees segmentation based on horsepower. The higher horsepower – above 50hp – has been recording constant growth and has doubled from six to 12 percent in the past nine years. The below 35hp market, which had a 25 percent share in 2003-04, had fallen to 15 percent in 2011-12. A bulk of this share has gone to the medium segment – 35 to 50hp.

According to S Sridhar, CEO, Escorts Agri Machinery Group, “There is a huge opportunity for mechanisation. In about seven years, one in every four tractors sold in India will be a higher-hp tractor. People think that land acreage is getting smaller and so the tractor has to be smaller too, but this is not the ground reality.” He goes on to say that there is “informal consolidation” on the rise. “This is when two or three siblings split a piece of land from their inheritance, but only one of them does the actual farming. When he does this, he does it on all the land shares and so small tractors won’t do,” says Sridhar (seen here with Shenu Aggarwal, head – marketing).

New tractor range increases productivity Another phenomenon giving rise to increasing demand in high-hp tractors is the lack of availability of drivers. “A rich farmer with two or three tractors would be happy to have just one tractor that can do the work of two,” says Sridhar. With the ability to haul heavier equipments, the new 6060 and 6065 models can increase productivity by “50 to 60 percent easily”.

Escorts is betting on the higher-hp segment to regain its lost ground in the Indian market and plans to launch four new products in the next two years which are “predominantly in the higher-horsepower market.” Escorts’ sales for 2010-11 stood at around 63,000 units; this is expected to grow with the introduction of the new models. “We are looking at sales of around 10,000 units per annum for these two models alone, starting next year,” Sridhar says.

The manufacturer, however, does not plan to expand capacity at its Faridabad plant.

KARTHIK H