Puzzolana Expanding to 20 new geographies
Trade supportive policies will ease exports
I think the Indian government should concentrate on trade supportive policies. We can predict a growth after Dec’24, but it all depends on what measures the government takes to ease starting of new projects and reviving stalled projects. Inflation is being kept under a check, so the pain of price fluctuation is coming down.
India is poised for global growth since there is lack of manpower across the world. So, Indian entrepreneurs should gear up and push for sales in international markets. We would like the government to help ease the banking processes for us, as seen with the Chinese and African banks, which have more customer friendly policies. For us, a mere confirming of LC is a high 7-8%. We would like a more friendly approach by the Indian banks so that we can export with greater ease.
We are bullish on exports
We believe that this is the time for Indian businesses to be more aggressive in promoting their products to international markets since our export policies have been revised. We are looking at the markets of Africa, Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We are engaged with 7 dealers and more will be onboarded in the next 3 months. We are looking forward to Bauma Germany to boost our export goals, and are confident of expanding our distribution and dealerships to 20 new geographies in the next year or so.
Advancements in Puzzolana products
We have incorporated dual power of both Diesel and Electric operation with a changeover switch in our crawler crushers & screens to ensure fuel savings whenever there is grid power availability. In our modular/stationary plants, we are providing automation of the system operation through PLC and SKADA, so that the equipment are operated and monitored to produce the required quantity and quality of products.
We have also developed high capacity of plants of up to 1000 tons of primary system with Primary Jaw Crusher to take up to 1000 mm (1 mtr) boulders and stocking of up to 20,000 tons per day production. Our high-capacity Secondary Cone Crusher can take the output of Jaw Crusher 300 -350mm and two crushers can produce up to 1000 tons of (-) 40mm production. Three crushers are operating excellently to produce (-) 40mm of 100 TPH.
Integrated services & support
The demand from customers is for quality aggregates and sand with automation and control of production of the required quality of aggregates through remote monitoring of the data by contract managers. We also need to ensure fuel savings and reduce the idle operation of plants. We are therefore supporting customers by controlling cost or having a fixed cost for operation and maintenance. We ensure that they get a timely supply of spare parts by keeping a ready stock at key locations.
We train our customers’ teams on the checks they should do for operation and on the pre–checks for preventive maintenance of equipment and plants to economize their utilization and for fuel savings. We make routine visits to check the operation and maintenance of our plants.
Puzzolana aims to become a ‘Solution Partner’ by providing the following services to its customers:
Pre-Order Support
- Study the site condition and recommend a layout for creating the best stock of maintenance friendly products
- Test the ore samples to arrive at the wear life and recommend the minimum/maximum steel casting specifications
- Help the customer arrive at optimum cost/ton of production
- Based on the above, we can commit or limit the cost/ton of spares consumption
- Commitment on plant availability
- Training of customers’ operations team for optimum utilization of plant
- Ensure that parts are available at site
- Provide supervisory services for mainte- nance of plant and change of parts etc.
- Ensure availability and capacity of plant
- Training customers’ operation team for optimum utilization of plant
- Ensure availability of all parts
- Provide periodic maintenance of plant
- Undertake operation of plant with our sub-contractors
- Ensure that the required quantities and sizes of aggregate are produced.
- We support the major equipment/components of our plants under our “life cycle support” program
- We depute our service teams for periodic study of customers plants
- We pre-decide the time (say 6-7 years) for major overhauls of crushers at our factory or at our workshops
- After the completion of the project period or production of a pre-committed quantity of aggregates, we can provide support to customers with supply of genuine parts and ensure that their plant operates as per our operation and maintenance practices
Puzzolana is a strong Indian brand. When we take an order with delivery of 6-8 months, there is chance of price escalation of 20-30%; however, we do not pass on the price differences to our customers who also take contracts from the government. This leads to losses for us, so the inflationary pressure is disturbing. The government has to note that to make ‘Make in India’ goals successful, it should ensure that the SMEs are not troubled by inflationary pressures so that they can do their business with ease.
NBM&CW November 2022
