Volvo Trucks has announced that it is bullish on every aspect of heavy trucking, and is constantly evolving innovative solutions to compete and prevail in the Indian market.
Talking to Deccan Herald on the sidelines of the just concluded EXCON 2015, Volvo Group Trucks India President Pierre Jean Verge Salamon said, “In India, we are bullish on everything. We are developing innovative products and solutions in the area of bulk transport. For instance, considering that India is at the pivot of a major transformation, there will be more and more trade, and ports will grow. In that regard, we are planning road trains for ports, which will contain a FH 520 hp 6X4 tractors, pulling trailers with 200 tonne GCW (gross combination weight). Similarly, we have solutions such as ‘Dynafleet’, a real-time online fleet admin system, which provides remote records of the trucks’ movements and performance on the fingertips of fleet operators.”
Volvo has already emerged a name to reckon with in heavy mining operations, and believes that the company will move apace with the government’s push of the mining sector. The Centre has envisaged growing the country’s coal output from the current 500 million tonnes to one billion tonnes by 2020.
Salamon believes that the next five years will open up several opportunities in the coal mining sector, which will redefine productivity and efficiency demands. “Since more mining will take place, there will be need for a lot of equipment to reach deep into the mine. Anticipating a paradigm change in the mining industry, we have invested significantly in bringing in new products that are ready to take on the future demands of coal mining,” he said.
At EXCON 2015, Volvo Trucks launched two new large capacity 5-axle dump trucks for various mining applications namely, FMX 520 10x4 dump truck with 26.1 Cu.m body, and FMX 480 10x4 dump truck with 24 Cu.m body.
“Today, you don’t decide growth, but create the favourable conditions to further growth,” Salamon said, adding that the company has garnered around 65 per cent market share in the high performance mining segment.
Construction crux
Meanwhile, discussions have begun in the industry to eye the construction space. While Volvo is not yet a serious contender here, Salamon said that a few challenges in this realm must be resolved. “The key challenge here is infrastructural development, which must be achieved for better movement. In a macroeconomic standpoint, this will also ease the flow of transport,” he said.
Volvo’s machines, pegged as premium, are best suited for complex ‘never-ending’ mining operations, aptly supported by their almost 24-hour uptime. While Volvo has sold 10,000 trucks (70 per cent of them overdimensional cargo, 30 per cent mining), the company claims an average truck-in-mine time by customer at 6,500 hours per year.
Published 30 November 2015, 19:59 IST