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Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Post Bauma Conexpo India 2024

Interaction – Nischal Mehrotra (NM), Senior Vice President & Rohit Punjabi (RP), Vice President & Business Head – Excavator, Liugong India Pvt. Ltd. January 2025

LiuGong India a leading Construction equipment manufacturer offering a wide range of extreme duty machines for construction and mining industry consistently since 2002. LiuGong machines adopt proven technologies to thrive in the most rigorous conditions of India making them – highly productive, efficient, durable, simple to run, easy to service and cost-efficient. In an exclusive interview to CONSTRUCTION OPPORTUNITIES, NISCHAL MEHROTRA (NM), SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT & ROHIT PUNJABI (RP), VICE PRESIDENT & BUSINESS HEAD – EXCAVATOR, LIUGONG INDIA PVT LTD, speak on their EV range of machines, Make in India, after market services and a lot more.

(NM) Yes, definitely we are in line with the vision of Honorable Minister for Roads & Highways Nitin Gadkari. Last year in the same place, he inaugurated our first loader, 6 Tonne class of EV loader. And this time we are displaying 10 different models of the EV. In one year, we increased our numbers in 10 fold.

(NM) It’s overwhelming response from our customers. We are getting a number of repeat orders from the customers. When hydraulic excavators were introduced in India in 1973-74, everybody thought, what madness is this? How a hydraulic excavator will work in our scenario? Because the time was of Road troubles. Today, you cannot think of an excavator which is not hydraulic. Last year, same place, same location, we had one EV loader and the industry was saying, either way, we are going to buy this. So expensive. Today, we have the guts of putting 10 machines, all sold out. And back order of maybe next three months.

(NM) Yes. In the market, we have the early mover advantage.

Our management in our current company, they had the vision. Our MD had the vision. We all had the vision that this is going to the future. People said, the price gap is so high that, maybe people will not accept it. You will not believe today, if you ask me for machines, EVs, I don’t have. We got the first 3.5 ton loader, Today, we are sitting on at least 15 orders and wondering how to give these 15 machines. The best part, everybody wants the first machine.

(RP) Well, it is just TCO. See, the movement of customers was always towards TCO. It is only how they understand the TCO now is better. The maturity of Indian customers has developed drastically over last few years. They don’t look at the equipment only as a capital investment. They look at the equipment, how the equipment should perform four years, five years down the line. And what support the OEM is giving them. People who have understood EV, go for it. Only challenge is that today we are struggling, or the industry is struggling to concept of EV. That is what is more important. How fast can the EV concept go into the minds and hearts of people. Today, if you see developed countries, China, US, it’s all EV. There are some sections of European culture who are still talking of hydrogen. We don’t see coming in the future. We see EV in the future. Immediate future is EV.

(RP) If you talk about the EV, this construction equipment, it’s supposed to work in one confined area only. For that we can develop the charging station and everything in that particular area. There is no challenge at all. It is not a challenge which you must be comparing to an automobile. An automobile is a consumer. You have to have chargers at different places. Here, if the customer is working, let’s say, in Nalanda in Bihar, and he has a work of one kilometer, two kilometers confined area, for him it will be easy for him to get a charge at work.

Most of the machines, the large ones, give seven to eight hours, nine hours of operating time for one charge of 70 minutes. And even we have the now big power bank, you can say. 423 kilowatts power banks are also available. If you do not want to move the machine, you can take the power bank there and put the machine, keep on running. In terms of an end user, they will save a lot of maintenance expenses when it comes to EV? Almost 50 percent. The engine part is gone.

(RP) We think it’s better that you judge our actions rather than our thoughts.

(NM) We will try to increase our market share in wheel loaders. Graders and Excavators. So now we have the full range of products for the road construction. We have full range of products for the mining.

We have dump trucks, we have higher capacity excavators, we have higher capacity of graders. If we talk about any type of application, infrastructure, road or mining. Full range of products is already available with Luigong. Not only IC engine, even with the EV.

So we are quite in line with the government idea about the Viksit Bharat. With the green energy, we are ready. And not only that, for mining, our dump trucks, the 70 ton period capacity dump trucks are a runaway success. They perform better than any competition, randomly pick one name. The TOC, the TCO, the performance, the uptime, much better than any competition.

(RP) Made in India for the world is a good slogan but the fact remains, we are moving in that direction. At every level, whether it is manufacturing of hydraulics, manufacturing of track chains, manufacturing of any components, the direction is set. We will not say that next year we will challenge the world. But we are 100% sure the direction set is in line with the vision of our Honorable Prime Minister. We are all moving towards that. But again, the world was never built in one day. It takes time. It takes technologies to get absorbed. Intricate technologies, hydraulics, axels are still being made in India.

But intricate hydraulic technology, whether it is pumps, mobile devices, control walls, it will take time to absorb. And then once we are ready, 2047 is the deadline for us. And we are also investing hugely for our next plant. The next plant is under construction In the same place Pithampur. We are coming with the extension of our plant. By next year, maybe first quarter of the 2026 it will be operational.

(NM) We have now set up a separate vertical. Because if you see the canvas, it is huge. We have excavators, motor graders, wheel loaders, compactors. Now MHE. The number of line items required for all these parts in different models. And the expertise required. We actively engage with National Skill Development Council.

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