Pune to be manufacturing hub for JCB in Asia

Earth moving and construction equipment company JCB India Ltd commenced the manufacture of three new heavy machines at its facility in Talegaon near Pune to meet the growing demands for the domestic market and the export market.

"Pune will be the export manufacturing hub for Indonesia and Malaysia, and eventually even WEst Asia," said Vipin Sondhi, managing director, JCB India Ltd.

The company also plans to start exporting its backhoes manufactured at Ballabgarh, Haryana by 2008, he added. Presently, JCB meets the demands in these markets through its facilities in the UK.

JCB has invested $50 million in the last 18 months in Pune for setting up two manufacturing facilities, one for components and the other for products.

The company has a 55 per cent market share in construction equipment in India. "We sold 10,800 machines during calendar year 2006, while the overall machine market size was 21,000 units," said Sandeep Singh, executive vice president - sales, marketing and product support, JCB India Ltd while projecting a growth of 30 per cent this calendar year and a demand of 1,000 units for its new products.

With this expansion JCB forays into the construction solutions segment in the country. Presently, over 90 per cent of JCB's revenues in India come from backhoe.

"We expect the new product range to account for at least 15 per cent of our overall sales," said Singh.

The new range includes a backhoe JS140, which has a 14 tonne load carrying capacity and fills the gap between the presently the available 8-tonne and 2-tonne machines. This will be priced at Rs 35 lakh.

The JCB Vibromax VM 115, priced at Rs 23 lakh is a compactor for road digging and compacting. It will be its first machine for the road construction segment in the country. "We will introduce the VM 850 in this segment at the end of year," said Mark Turner, managing director, JCB Heavy Products Ltd.

The third machine it launched today was the JCB 432 ZX Wheeled Loading Shovel for Rs 25 lakh. "This machine comes with a massive payload and has a good dump height," said Turner.