Puzzolana Machinery Fabricators, a major South India-based crushing and screening equipment manufacturer, has entered into a distribution tie up with Tata International for promoting its products into the African markets, reports Partha Pratim Basistha.
Under a memorandum of understanding, Tata International will distribute Puzzolana Machinery Fabricators’ (Puzzolana) stationery plants of 120 to 600tonnes/hour and 250 diesel electric track mounted plants used in the infrastructure, road and mining sectors. The plants will be promoted in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania, all of which are witnessing a surge in development of roads, railway connectivity, airport projects and townships.
Abhijeet Pai, president of the Puzzolana Group, said: “Tata International’s extensive business network in Africa is spread over 12 African countries and has been built up since its inception in 1969. Investment of over US$155 million will allow us to market all range of our customised crushing and screening solutions. The tie up will also be vital to promote our diesel electric track plants, which bring down the cost of ownership in high potential African markets.”
Pai continued: “The decision to tap into the African markets is based on our business strategy to widen our export business from the current 7% to 50% by 2025. This will be done by increasing our production capacity of 35 plants per month to 100 plants per month in the next five years. We will also look for further business expansion through global acquisitions, if the situation demands. With surface miners now being indigenously developed by us and successfully deployed in Coal India, we look forward to establishing ourselves as a leading player in coal and mineral processing equipment in the Middle East and South East Asian markets.”
Speaking to Aggregates Business International on how Tata International will synergise its business strength with Puzzolana and deliver value to the latter in driving sales in the highly competitive African market, Len. J Brand, executive director & head, Distribution Vertical, Tata International, said: “We will be targeting the second-tier customers working as sub-contractors. This segment of contractors, who own plants and machineries, remains largely untouched by the foreign OEMs and the financial institutions. To ensure that these contractors are able to make their operations viable, we will provide them total life-cycle solutions and higher return on investments through timely machine value analysis. We can provide further gains through predictive and preventive maintenance based on our strong engineering expertise backed by our dedicated sales, service and parts support team. To make operations financially viable, we may go on to deploy the plant through a 30% down payment from our side.”
Puzzolana was incorporated in 1964 as an equipment manufacturer of mini cement plants, with manufacturing of 100-200 and 300tonnes/hour jaw and cone crushers beginning in 1998. The company now has a manufacturing capacity to offer up to 1000tonnes/hour jaw, cone and impact crushing and screening plants that offer anything from single to quaternary stage processing. Puzzolana’s product range also includes sand crushers for concrete and plaster sand, vibrating screens and grizzly and vibro feeders, wet and dry type sand classifiers, and the newly launched three-stage track-mounted plants. The company has three in-house foundries in Hyderbad offering a total of 36,000tonnes of annual capacity. Puzzolana claims to have 50 plants in operation across 15 countries.
