Schwing Stetter looks to ride mega infra push, plans 22 new launches in 2020

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s recently announced a mega investment of Rs 102 lakh crore infrastructure development pipeline (NIP). This includes Rs 20 lakh crore investment in the road sector which will not only benefit the M&HCV sector but also companies engaged in the construction equipment business. The Chennai-based concrete machine manufacturer Schwing Stetter India is one of them.

Schwing Stetter India, which was one of the prominent exhibitors at last month’s EXCON Expo in Bangalore, announced the launch of 22 new products in 2020. They were all unveiled at the leading construction expo. Along with new products, the company also showcased IoT solutions (Schwing IoT In, IoT Ready, IoT abled), dashboard for batching plants, Schwing smartrack and Stetter concrete transit mixer with a mobile app.

VG Sakthikumar, managing director, Schwing Stetter India said: “With the new IoT solutions, customers can understand and control various aspects of the machine. We have also started a cloud system called Schwing Cloud. Some of our customers have hired the space for storing information about their machines. This is catching up really fast.”

Of the 22 new products unveiled, some have been developed in India. They include the Stetter concrete batching plant CP21, concrete batching plant M1 precast, self-loading concrete mixer SLM bee 2.0, self-propelled concrete mixer SPM4000 and the Stetter concrete recycling plant RA6. The other products were developed in the US, China and Austria.

Incorporated in June 1998 with manufacturing commencing in 1999, Schwing Stetter India is a fully owned subsidiary of Schwing Group of companies GmbH and a part of the XCMG Group. At present, the Indian arm exports to 30 countries.

India market growth strategy
Elaborating on the company’s India growth strategy, Sakthikumar said: “India is a unique market and many global solutions would not work here. India is the happening place for construction equipment and we have to work a lot to bring new products here. For example, the backhoe loader which is popular in India is not a choice for the rest of the world. Keeping all this in mind and the market demand in India, we will be looking at the possibility of expanding our R&D team here.”

The company has manufacturing units in 12 countries including Germany, Austria, USA, Brazil, Russia, Ostrava, UK and India. Schwing Stetter India plans to invest around Rs 240 crore for a new excavator plant in Tamil Nadu, which will commence production of boom pumps for North America, western Europe and other markets by mid-2020. It will also make excavators for India initially and would look at exporting them too. 

Commenting on the prolonged downturn in the Indian automobile market, Sakthikumar said, “Growth does not come as a straight line. Yes, the downturn has affected us. But, how we respond to it is important. During the last recession in 2008, we responded by increasing our number of branches from eight to twenty-two. We went all out and reaped its benefits. Without doing any innovation one would not be able to sustain. Customers want new products and we want to give them what they require. We understood this and kept innovating constantly. This is one of the important reasons why we launched so many new products.”  

Also read: CV industry gets a boost, Centre announces Rs 20 lakh crore investment for roads