Cranes, Centrifugal Fans & Motors, Electrical Panels & Enclosures/Junction Boxes and Cable Accessories, Industrial Valves and many other - these manufacturers and suppliers in Chennai are at the forefront of the resurgent industries in the southern parts of India. A round of interviews with select enterprises on the occasion of the Special Section.

"STAHL Cranes are designed for minimum maintenance"

- Anand Dayanidhi, General Manager, STAHL CraneSystems India Pvt Ltd

How old is the company's India connection? How has the India experience been so far?

STAHL Cranes, Germany, is supplying the Indian subcontinent since 1985. The experience has been very encouraging so far. Until the year 2002, India was relatively restricted to the import of capital goods with higher duties, etc. But due to globalisation, relaxation in import duties began resulting in higher sales for our products. Also, lot of European, American, German, Japanese, Korean and other MNCs setting up base in India, most of whom knew STAHL cranes product superiority, started ordering through the local office and our partners. From 2000 onwards, we are witnessing a much greater and increasing acceptance and market share. At present, we have over 200 customers and above 500 installations working satisfactorily in India.

What are the products that you offer?

We offer hoists and crane components made in Germany which can be used in many material handling solutions like all types of cranes (EOT, gantry, semi gantry, wall travelling, jib) and conveyors, etc. Our safe working load range is from 125 kg - 160 tonnes. Our chain hoist range starts at 125 kg - 6.3 tonnes and graduates to wire rope hoists and winches. We also offer travel drives, wheel blocks for any material handling solution provider to use it for suitable applications. We not only offer our products but an end to end support to our crane building partners in terms of sales, service, training and spares support. We function as a competent bridge between our end users and our crane building partners.

What are the applications?

Any material handling equipment like all types of cranes for industries like manufacturers of automobiles, machine tools, construction machinery, engineering industry (pumps, valves, compressors, engines, gearboxes), power and turbine makers, electrical equipment manufacturing companies, paper industry, heavy fabrication industry, refineries, off shore platforms, and chemical industry, to name a few.

Why should the customer opt for these?

STAHL CraneSystems provide material handling 'solutions' not alone 'equipments'. So the USPs are:

• Reliable German crane technology at Indian cost and with better value
• Proximity of our partners to industries for better relationship building/better response
• Local subsidiary driving the whole process and facilitate sales, service training, warranty support, etc
• Each customer who buys our equipment has easy access to STAHL service network, and
• Local availability of spares in India.

Do you have manufacturing activity in India or is it just a marketing/servicing operation?

Worldwide, STAHL CraneSystems supplies crane technology and hoists and crane equipment through reputed crane building partners. In India, we have partners in strategic locations like Coimbatore, Pune, Hyderabad, Faridabad, and Kolkata. Our subsidiary in India is headquartered at Chennai and we play a vital back end role in sales support, service training, spares planning and bridge any gap between our partners and our end customers. The partners would make the steel structures and the critical components would be supplied from Germany. As crane industry is after sales service oriented, we have partnered with reputed, and service oriented crane building companies in strategic locations mentioned above.

How strong/effective is the after sales service?

STAHL CraneSystems' products are designed with minimum need for maintenance and service. However, any equipment which works continuously and also at an elevated condition need service back up. India is a subcontinent and the crane industry is a highly fragmented industry in India. Keeping the knowledge of an ordinary crane operator and maintenance capacity, it is vital that equipment like crane, which is moving continuously at some height, should have quick service back up. Most importantly, we should have the ability to train users on safety aspects of its maintenance and usage. Moreover, we need local companies who know the customer requirements and can speak local language and can reach the site as quickly as possible (say within 8 hours of notification). Keeping all this in mind, we have tied up with strategically located partner companies who are highly service oriented. STAHL Cranes has an expert deputed from Germany who trains our people with partner companies on our products as a regular job. While handing over the equipment, we ensure that we provide comprehensive maintenance training. All the necessary wearing parts are kept in stock at our partners in Coimbatore/Pune for ready use. Most of our business is repeat orders which also indicates the customer satisfaction levels through excellent product offering and high value of ownership. How does the cost of ownership over the life cycle compare with competition? The cost of ownership is very optimum as the requirements of service, parts replacement are very minimum once supplied. Though most of the competition is aiming at this quality, STAHL CraneSystems stands apart with the backup of German crane technology and also 130 years of sustenance in this industry. This is evident from the fact that worldwide, many crane builders prefer to use our hoists and components and the relationship is matured over 20 years in most countries. All equipment that we make is extremely safe for any person to handle. When compared to the previous generation cranes, our equipment come with high efficiency motors and also consume less power for unit tonne of load handling.

What is the Company's history?

STAHL Cranes has been around for some 130-plus years. With our highly committed development team and countless pioneering inventions, we have succeeded in decisively influencing the technological progress within the industry. Our well-conceived standard product range, further advanced into sophisticated special-purpose solutions and explosion-protected hoists, has helped us achieve our worldwide success. Chain hoists, wire rope hoists, winches, drive and control technology as well as condition monitoring systems; our well-engineered products are premium class - both technically and commercially. We have the trust of various engineering companies, consulting firms and end users all around the globe. Even though, we have some country-specific competition around the world, STAHL Cranes is considered to be a superior platform in technology, design and reliability.

What are the company's achievements?

We have two important crane building partners in South and West, to be specific, MM Engineers Pvt Ltd, Coimbatore and Sparkline Equipment Pvt Ltd, Pune, who contribute to our major success in India. We are very successful and proud to be associated with them in India. Also, other good companies like Grip Engineers Ltd in Faridabad, Shivpra Cranes in Hyderabad and Toubro Ferguson Engineers in Kolkata are developing fast in the respective regions. Spreading our locations strategically close to the industrial areas and developing a strong relationship with our partners is our major achievement from 1985 consistently. This has resulted in 200 customers and a large installation base in India. In 2009, we secured a sales partnership with Electromech, Pune, to focus into business development of explosion protected cranes and components for oil and gas, chemical industries in India.

Any breakthrough product launch that made a difference?

We have launched STD type vario chain hoists (twin hooks with variable distance), twin drive hoists for metal handling applications as a technology innovation in our chain and wire rope hoists applications.

How is the present business environment?

The present business environment is very challenging and offers excellent growth opportunity since India is posed for good growth in the next 10 years in power, infrastructure and construction segments. As the awareness for safety is increasing multi-fold with recent disasters in the Gulf of Mexico, hazardous areas in the industry like oil and gas, chemical are looking for extremely reliable products like STAHL Cranes which opens up new avenues for us to grow in India.

What are the future plans? Do you have any plans to start manufacturing operations in India?

We are very much excited about the growth opportunities present in India. Continuous investments from MNCs into India, Indian infrastructure and manufacturing growing at 8-9% rate per annum, customers looking for maintenance friendly and reliable products - offer a right environment for our growth. Moreover, we have tied up with right partners at right locations, which is our major advantage. At the moment, our German factory is supporting above our expectations in terms of the delivery requirements in short periods.

(Stahl CraneSystems, Tel: 044-43523955/56; Fax: 91-44-43523957. Email: anand@stahlcranes.in)