V Venkataramana
Vice President
Puzzolona Group
Puzzolona supplies on an average 10 plants every month of capacity ranging from 200-300 tph. The company has installed more than 1800 plants in the country, almost double the number of plants supplied by the 2nd and 3rd leading MNCs in this sector. V Venkataramana interacts with ICR to share the success story.
Please tell us in brief about your company, your products and the markets served by you.
Puzzolona is engaged in the design, manufacture, supply, installation and commissioning of crushing and screening plants on a turnkey basis. Puzzolana Group was incorporated in 1964 as Puzzolana Machinery Fabricators. The company started as a manufacturer of equipment for mini cement plants. It is the first indigenous manufacturer of aggregates and mining ore crushing and screening equipment. The company developed the complete technology here in India to meet the requirements of Indian customers.
We offer 100 TPH to 1200 TPH capacity crushing and screening plants with two, three or quadra stages with jaw crusher, cone crusher and vertical shaft impactor, sand crushers for both concrete and plaster sand. We also offer circular, linear and high speed vibrating screens, grizzly and vibro feeders, and sand classifiers of wet type and dry type.
Who are your major clients? Please highlight a few of your ongoing projects?
Our clients include major infrastructure companies involved in road construction, hydroelectric projects, mega builders, commercial aggregate and manufactured sand suppliers, etc.
Where are your manufacturing facilities located?
We have two state-of-the-art alloy steel foundries with capacity to handle single piece steel castings up to 15 tonnes at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh and at Dharwad in Karnataka, with 1000 tonnes of castings per month. Puzzolana facilities are ISO 9001 approved.
We have manufacturing facilities around Hyderabad for fabrication with automatic plate cutting machines, welding stations, automatic punching, drilling and press brake, etc. We have machine shops with VTL and boring machines for machining of all castings in Dharwad and in Hyderabad.
Do you offer equipment on lease basis?
We directly do not offer equipment on hire basis. However, some of our customers have set up plants for supply of aggregates on per tonne basis.
Tell us about your R&D activities.
R&D is a part of our regular business. We have developed crushers for producing manufactured sand and plaster sand as per Indian standards and to fit the equipment cost in economical range. Today customers are looking for technologies for producing aggregates of good quality with minimum wastage and least harm to the environment. Now we are launching a hybrid design cone crusher and high speed screens for ultra fines separation. Customers are looking for highly productive and low maintenance equipment with minimum cost/tonne in production of crushed material. We are focusing on these aspects in our R&D endeavours
How is the equipment manufacturing sector of India performing today?
The market has slowed down, but with a dynamic government at the centre and their progressive views on infrastructure development, we hope that the market will revive by the end of 2014.
How do you see the entry of Chinese equipment manufacturers in India?
There is no competition with respect to the Chinese equipment, since technologically, our equipment is superior and anyway companies competing with us are already importing crushers from China. So we are not much concerned about the entry of Chinese equipment manufacturers in India.