The country’s top elevator and escalator company Johnson Lifts is eyeing a significant growth in its topline, supported by ₹138-crore capacity expansion, penetration into more locations and strong order book.
The company, which has one-fifth of the elevator market share, has been recording strong volume growth in the past three years. Its elevator sales grew from 5,200 units in FY09 to 9,500 units in FY16 and to more than 12,000 units in FY19.
“We achieved a record of producing, selling and installing more than 10,000 lifts in a year during FY19,” said Yohan K John, Director, Johnson Lifts.
With swelling orders from across categories, including infrastructure segments such as railways and metro stations, the company has set up a new factory near Chennai, its 4th unit, with a capacity to make 6,000 lifts per annum at an investment of ₹125 crore.
The unit has created jobs for 500 people. With this, the total capacity of lifts will increase to 18,000 units per annum. The company has also increased the production capacity of escalators with a second line at its Oragadam unit at an investment of ₹13 crore. This line will produce about 500 escalators per annum, taking the total production capacity of escalators to 1500 units a year.
“Own manufacturing units, quick delivery and strong after-sales support provide us edge over the competition, including global players. In several projects, we have delivered in record time when competition cited the delivery schedule as ‘impossible’. We now have strong momentum in railway and metro projects, too, said V Jagannathan, Executive Director, Johnson Lifts.
John said the company saw bright prospects to supply to various government projects including the upgradation of railway stations, airports, metros and smart cities. The company will also expand to more Tiers and three cities to tap emerging opportunities in housing space.
With all these, it targets to achieve revenues of about ₹3,000 crore by FY21, up from ₹2,000-crore plus in FY19 and ₹419 crore in FY09. It is also hopeful of growing the market share beyond the current 20 per cent.
The company’s current order book stands at about 1,800 units. It has just bagged projects worth ₹65-crore from Chennai Airport and Chennai Metro for the installations of lifts and escalators.
“This will help in handling increased passenger capacity from 18 million to 35 million with a free flow of traffic in the terminals areas,” said Albert Dhiraviyum, Country Head, Marketing of the company.
The company will also supply more than ₹350 crore worth of lifts and escalators to Mumbai metro, Central Railway and Western Railway projects.