Sandvik Asia eyes Indian mining, construction equipment market

Sandvik is eying to increase its market penetration and market share in India.

The company announced acquisition of new land of 50 acres for Sandvik Asia Pvt. Ltd in Chakan near Pune and projects significant investments including R&D by 2016.

The company is planning to set up a facility to manufacture construction equipment and infrastructure machinery. The plant will be operational by mid of 2015.

However, company has not disclosed any financial details of this project. Also, Sandvik has decided to focus on its construction equipment business out of other verticals like mining, machining solutions, materials technology.

It will invest more than 90 per cent in construction equipment business.

Commenting on this, Olof Faxander, President and CEO, Sandvik Group said, "Sandvik's overall focus is to provide added values to ensure the customers' enhanced productivity, higher competitiveness and increased profitability. We want to make India as our global resourcing place.

Already, its centre of excellence in computational modelling has been operating in Pune and extended R & D footprints are being built under R & D Campus concept with product design and development activities for mining, construction, bulk material handling, cutting and rock tools."

The company has recently launched 160 D Surface Rock Drill locally designed, sourced and manufactured for Indian market, mainly for medium size industries.

This is one of the first developments from the engineering and design center for mining and construction, which will now be enlarged to include about 15 designers in the first phase in Pune.

Ajay Sambrani, managing director, Sandvik Asia Pvt Ltd, said, "We have identified mining and construction as a major growth area in India, which will make significant contribution to the company's top line and would become the largest Business Area in Sandvik Asia Pvt. Ltd. in a short time. In this context it must be mentioned that India is becoming an important global source for components, assemblies, materials, spares and consumables, etc., which are required for the group's manufacturing of mainly mining and construction equipment".

The R & D will be complimented by a  teams at Bangalore, Kolkata and Gurgaon. Besides, the R&D team and Patancheru (Hyderabad) will continue to grow in line with global requirement of specific types of rock excavation tools.

As a part of its CSR engagement programmes, Sandvik has formed 'Sandvik Chair Professorship' in Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.