Thaindian News

Panaji, Oct 18 (IANS) Putzmeister Concrete Machines (PCM) India Tuesday said it will invest four million euros over the next three years to expand production capacity at its Goa manufacturing plant as well as service hubs spread across the country.

Speaking to reporters at the company’s manufacturing facility at the Verna industrial estate, 25 km from here, PCM’s managing director of India operations Michael Schmid-Lindenmayer said the funds had been cleared by the company’s board of directors and would be disbursed later this month.

“We have already invested six million euros in our India operations and will now invest four million euros more to increase our capacity to meet the rising demand of concrete machines and other construction equipment in India.

“The money would be used to expand our manufacturing facility by a few thousand square metres, in order to increase our production capacity,” he said, adding that the facility, its only production unit in India, was founded in 2005.

Schmid-Lindenmayer said that the Goa unit was producing 800 trailer pumps and 120 truck pumps — both construction-related hardware which is used to mix concrete and pump the slush during construction of slabs, pillars and walls.

“We want to increase our trailer pump manufacturing capacity to 3,000 and the truck pump capacity to 2,000 post-expansion,” he said, adding that the market in this segment was expected to grow at 50 to 60 percent annually.

He added that while more than 50 percent of the components for Putzmeister machines were being imported from Germany, the company was looking at more than 90 percent indigenous manufacturing in the next couple of years.

Schmid-Lindenmayer also said that in recent years, concrete mixers were in high demand in India due to several mega government sector infrastructure projects like the Commonwealth Games facilities, Metro railway project in Hyderabad and others.