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How is the medium and heavy-duty mobile cranes market progressing in India? Which projects are the major demand drivers?
The overall outlook for next couple of years for pick and carry, and medium and heavy duty mobile cranes is positive. While we expect a sustainable growth on YoY basis, but due to pandemic, we might see some hiccups in between. But clearly, mobile cranes market in India will grow in the next three to four years. High-speed rail projects, road projects, airports (both Greenfield like Jewar and expansion in cities like Delhi and Chennai airports), various metro and rapid rail projects, Greenfield refinery projects and various water pipe laying projects across India will drive the growth of mobile cranes in upcoming years.

The mobile cranes market in India is still dominated by pick-n-carry cranes. Why?
Pick-n-carry cranes in India became popular as they are value for money products initially and off late they have developed to be cost effective, highly efficient and productive and easy to maintain. These cranes are available through hirers and contractors across all major district centers of India. They now dominate the material handling space.

What are the major design changes in your range of products?
At ACE, our company DNA has always stemmed from developing value-for-money products from the customer standpoint, on the one hand. While still offering operator-friendly products, on the other. Robust R&D has always been a big part of our success story. The evolution of NextGen and multi activity cranes range attributed the successors our team achieved in last couple of years.

We had recently launched the NX Series NextGen multi activity cranes. These new NX Series cranes perform multiple tasks apart from crane operations thereby adding versatility and providing multi-purpose utilisation for the users. These types of multi activity cranes with articulated steering are the first in the world and ACE has already applied for the necessary patents for the entire series.

All our BS IV models in the 15-30 tonne range developed in last six and eight months and our multi activity cranes – NXP 150, NX 360 and FP 210, which are now part of every major infrastructure project, speak volume about success of our endeavours.

What is the role of safety in heavy-duty mobile cranes? What are the added safety features in your mobile cranes?
All the new higher capacity models are made keeping in mind the enhanced safety requirements on the project site, which are now working as per world standards. Use of SLI, telematics, etc. is now common and has become standard features of most of our machines.

How do you look at the market recovery and outlook for mobile cranes? What will drive the growth in future?
Infrastructure is the very foundation of every strong nation and economy. According to the vision of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is coursed to growing into a $5 trillion dollar economy by 2024. This can definitely pave the way for the success of the construction equipment industry. Government spending on infrastructure and rapid urban development is at an all-time high. Also, the overall growth of the Indian economy, in the coming years, will further boost disposable income. This will in turn further increase the demand for better infrastructure and development. We are proud to say that ACE is a 100 per cent Swadeshi brand.