Increased presence in growth market India – Local final assembly secures competitiveness

The Wirtgen Group has already been represented on the Indian market with its own sales and service company Wirtgen India for two decades. Now, the Wirtgen Group is taking the next step to safeguard its competitive ability in the long-term: a new headquarters is being built in the industrial centre of Pune in north-west India, comprising a large sales and service centre with connected final assembly plant for Hamm single-drum compactors, which are in particularly high demand in India.

Long-term local commitment

The Indian market currently harbours remarkable potential: just like China, India is one of Asia‘s emerging industrial countries experiencing incredible economic growth. This dynamism also has positive effects during times of crisis: the markets recover significantly faster than those of Western industrial nations. True to its corporate pledge „Close to our customers,“ the Wirtgen Group has already demonstrated a strong presence in India – a country with 28 states – through local sales and service points in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Hyderbad, Bangalore and Calcutta. „To also ensure that we‘re well positioned to cater to the special requirements of the Indian market in the medium to long term, we have decided in favour of local production,“ says Stefan Wirtgen, President of the Wirtgen Group, explaining the strategic decision. The final assembly of single-drum compactors for earthworks is scheduled to commence at the new Pune site from mid-2010. The Wirtgen Group has already successfully taken a similar step in China, where Wirtgen China produces market-specific products for local sale at an assembly plant.

Pune – a location chosen with foresight

The future headquarters of Wirtgen India is located just 45 minutes from Pune city centre. The central location in India, combined with the close vicinity to the sub-continent‘s most important port and the financial centre of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), are clear locational advantages. International industrial enterprises, such as Liebherr and Cummins, are already located here, and there are numerous component suppliers in the immediate vicinity – a decisive factor as the Wirtgen Group is uncompromising when it comes to selecting its suppliers. The quality of the components purchased locally in India must fulfil the same stringent requirements placed on products for global sale. „The component suppliers based around Pune are highly efficient. This naturally ensures that the products produced locally for our Indian endcustomers are of high quality,“ states Ramesh Palagiri, Managing Director of Wirtgen India.

Focus on training qualified machine operators

At the foundation ceremony for the new construction project, special thanks were extended to the management of Rhineland-Palatinate Economics Ministry, which backed the project in cooperation with the German-Indian Chamber of Commerce. The 90,000-m² site comprises the sales building, a state-of-the-art workshop and a large spare parts warehouse for the Indian market. An additional highlight is the training centre, where not only customers of the Wirtgen Group can attend regular training activities, but where a trailblazing project for the Indian market is also in the offing: Wirtgen India plans on training some 200 machine operators from scratch each year, in order to ensure that sufficient personnel with the proper qualifications are available to operate Wirtgen Group machines in the future.

Equipped for the future

By expanding its presence in India, the Wirtgen Group is setting a milestone for future activities in a market that still holds tremendous potential thanks to an ambitious infrastructure programme: „We‘re convinced that Wirtgen Group products have the potential to boost the capabilities of our Indian customers both in the road construction industry and the mining industry. If we‘re then also able to offer products that are produced locally and which are precisely matched to the special requirements of our customers in India, then we will have achieved our goal through this new commitment,“ emphasises Stefan Wirtgen. The local construction firms are certainly not short of work: India‘s government is giving a great deal of support to infrastructure expansion and renewal with projects worth billions, such as the „National Highway Development Programme“, which covers 200 projects and over 13,000 km of highway, or the „Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission“, which is financing the infrastructure in the sixty largest cities of India. Slipform pavers from Wirtgen and Vögele road pavers have already been involved in major projects like the „Golden Quadrilateral“ for years. Now, the objective is to increase the market shares of additional product lines of the Wirtgen Group. The „Golden Quadrilateral“ is a motorway system that connects the Indian cities of New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Calcutta. Almost 6,000 km long, the motorway currently has four lanes. It is to be expanded to a six-lane motorway by 2014.