How are you managing costs at the manufacturing level?
Well, this is the biggest challenge. All manufacturers' bottom line is very badly hit. Every company is implementing austerity measures to cut down expenses. However there is a limit. The market has to improve substantially, until this happens all of us will be in deep trouble.

What is your capacity and how much of it are you utilising at present?
In 2010-11, we increased our capacity by almost 30 percent. Today, our capacity utilisation depending on the type of product is between 30 percent to 50 percent.

You were also planning to have one more manufacturing plant. What's the progress on that front? Have you identified the location and the investments for this?
We are waiting the market to improve. We will take a decision once the market improves.

Tell us about your R&D activities.
Schwing as a group invests about three percent on R&D. Predominantly the R&D activities are carried out in Germany, USA and India. So we work closely with our parent company and develop new concepts and products.

What has been Schwing Stetter India's growth in the last two years? What are your targets for the next two years including the current FY?
Because of some export sales and the introduction of new products, fortunately for us, we did not see a de-growth, in the last two years. We had a growth of six percent last year and this year we are expecting to grow 15 percent. However, we are still far away from our levels in 2011. It is too difficult to predict anything at the moment. We would wait for another six months to plan our growth for the future. Currently our export revenue is about nine percent of our total revenue.

What is your personal vision for Schwing Stetter India?
We want to be a strong, long term player in the concreting equipment market which is our focus area. We are experts on concreting equipment and would like to grow around this.

What are the three key milestones you would want the industry to achieve during your tenure as the President of the Indian Construction Equipment Manufacturers Association (ICEMA)?
Well, ICEMA has been very active in interacting with the various government Department of heavy industries and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. We have set a certain agenda and two or three very important issues that we are discussing with the Government are:

• Set up a Test Centre for OFF-Highway equipments which is a huge project.
• We are working with the Government to put up a CEMM Act (Construction, Earthmoving, Mining and Material handing Act) which will focus on off highway equipments.
• Working very closely with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to improve the quality and productivity of equipments used for road projects.

END