Exploring the Indian material handling sector in a conversation with Mr. Manojit Acharya, MD, Jungheinrich Lift Truck India Pvt Ltd.

Material handling is the need of almost all businesses. What prompted you to this foray of competitive business?

JUNGHEINRICH AG with its headquarters in Hamburg and with a turnover of approx. EUR 3.1 billion in 2016, ranks among the world’s leading companies in the material handling equipment, warehousing and material flow engineering sectors. Founded in 1953, JUNGHEINRICH is intra-logistics solution provider, which offers its customers a comprehensive range of forklift trucks, logistics systems, services and consulting. JUNGHEIRICH INDIA, is a 100 per cent subsidiary of JUNGHEIRICH, AG and is a sales and service organisation.

What is the nature of business transacted by the company? Sales and service or rental? Any manufacturing activity?

Ours is a sales and service organisation. We engage with the customer through various divisions, they are: New equipment sales, Rental basis and Used equipment. All three functions are supported by after sales team.

What are the advantages provided by an organised equipment rental company?

Organised rental companies provide structured approach of business solutions. Customer gets the direct access best in class pool of expertise and the transactions are transparent and clear. Our PAN India presence gives a stronger support to customer for business expansion across India along with integrated solutions and support from a single supplier.

It is a crowded market with large corporates as well as the unorganised sector. What is the USP of Jungheinrich Lift Truck India?

Jungheinrich is a logistic solution partner which provides high quality products which are safe , productive , reliable and environment friendly.The products have distinct features which provide substantial benefit to the customer. For example our battery works for 10-12 hours and hence you have to charge the battery only once. Two shift 1 charge battery. This results in saving power and increasing efficiency of the truck.

How strong/effective is the after sales service?

At Jungheinrich we believe in complete customer engagement and hence we have a strong service team. 55 per cent of our work force is in service and they are well equipped and trained to do commissioning services and AMC. We also supply spare parts from our warehouse near Mumbai where we hold stock of critical spares parts for our full range of products and deliver the them at the shortest time to our customers. JUNGHEINRICH ensure that customers equipment’s remain highly available via a comprehensive network of service engineers and part support.

What is the Company’s history?

Jungheinrich association with India has been a long one. We were represented by a dealer in India for many years, in 2012 JUNGHEIRICH INDIA was established as a 100 per cent subsidiary of JUNGHEIRICH, AG. We are present in the market for last 5 years and have introduced our high end technology products to the Indian market and also provide service support to these products.

Any breakthrough product/service launch that made a difference?

Jungheinrich will continue to provide innovative solutions, which are more efficient, clean. In Europe, we have now introduced our equipment fitted with Lithium Ion batteries. Jungheinrich is amongst the early suppliers to adopt Lithium Ion technology to material handling equipment. These batteries are more efficient, provides 6-10 times more cycles, have 100 per cent discharge and are very environment friendly as compared to lead acid battery. In future Lithium Ion battery will be standard feature for our trucks. We will shortly introduce this to Indian markets as well.

How is present business environment?

The recent trends in MHE revolve around providing high safety, reliability, productivity in equipment and Jungheinrich has positioned itself to cater to all these requirements. Our forklift are offered with features like curve control on bends/turns, mast cushioning, energy saving during braking, crawl speed switch and anti-roll back ensure safe operation. Increased productivity comes from higher speeds, lower dead weight per tonne of capacity and high residual capacity at maximum lift heights. Our strong and robust aftermarket services offer high spare parts availability, AMC contract and CMC contracts ensuring high uptimes and reliable performance of MHE.

What are the future plans?

We will continue to introduce latest technology products to the market aided by high performing service support.