Schwing Stetter India, a leading concreting and construction equipment manufacturer, expects to end 2021 with impressive performance aided by a surge in order book due to massive focus on infrastructure development by the Centre.

The company expects to end this calendar year with double-digit growth in revenue. In pandemic-hit 2020, the company reported total revenue of about ₹1,730 crore. With huge increase in order book size and brief lockdown phase this time (unlike all India lockdown like last year), the company has seen growth in sales, and almost touched last year's revenue in September.

Demand revival

“Demand revival for the construction equipment sector has been good this time, driven by projects in the road sector, metro rail network and high-speed train projects. Also, this time we suffered only for two months – May and June. Overall, we will end this calendar year with a strong growth,” VG Sakthikumar, Managing Director, Schwing Stetter India Ltd, told BusinessLine .

He said the increased spend on infrastructure development by the Centre had spurred demand for all ranges of construction equipment in the country. The overall volume in the construction equipment (CE) industry is expected to cross one lakh units in 2021.

Industry analysts say the CE industry will continue to witness a surge in orders as road construction activity will gather pace from now on with the withdrawal of monsoon. Road construction has been a major volume driver for the CE industry with pace of execution pace remaining healthy at 37 km per day in FY2021.

In FY22, it is targeted to be 40 km. This, in turn, is expected to support the volume growth post monsoon in line with government push on infrastructure.

While domestic business continues to grow, Schwing Stetter witnessed a boom in equipment exports too. In 2020, the company’s exports were worth ₹70 crore. This year, it will more than double its exports at about ₹200 crore.

Earlier this year, the company launched its new ₹300 crore factory at Cheyyar, about 90 km from Chennai, with a view to ship India-made machines such boom pumps, stationary pumps, self-loading mixers, shot rete pumps, excavators, wheel loaders, and motor graders to ASEAN, South America and other markets.

Skilling initiative

Schwing Stetter has also taken up skilling of people as a major initiative to address the shortages in the industry.

Sakthikumar said due to the second wave the company had to start the skill training programme in August and has so far trained more than 100 people. “Our aim is to train more than 10,000 youth in handling concrete and construction equipment in the next few years,” he added.