We are planning to bring some of the future technologies to India next year.

Ramesh Palagiri, MD & CEO, Wirtgen India

What are the breakthrough technologies from the company showcased at Excon 2023?

Let me start with what are the new products we have showcased for India market and for global customers. From the Kleemann side, we have launched scalper MSS802 which is another global product produced in India for world market and these machines are getting exported more than 80 countries. We have also started manufacturing the mobile stackers. So, these products are coming into production and for exporting as well as for the domestic market. We have also started the soil compactor HC119 tier 3 and coming in tier 5. From next year onwards, we will be launching new Vogele paver, Super 1900-3 G and P models. In innovation front, there is a lot happening in sustainability, digitalization and also electric machines. On a group level, we are now getting ready for electric machines in all the brands and we will introduce them where they are relevant to customers and those customers who are looking for these solutions. In telematics, we have started John Deere Operations Center, where we talk about not only telematics but also connecting machines.

How are your products supporting in building India’s tomorrow?

We have not displayed any machines here, what we are displaying here is future technologies which will be coming to India in the next three years. We are planning to bring some of these technologies to India next year, which include inline paver, mobile feeder, waste recycling, and new CR machine. Our theme here is road building and our major focus is road building and mining.

What are your sustainability initiatives?

At Wirtgen, we are already into sustainability for a long time and whatever I talked about the inline pave, where we pave hot on hot, is a sustainable technology. Here we are reducing layer thickness, doing away with tack board and so reducing carbon dioxide emission. Also, we are using lesser aggregates at the same time, getting the same finished product. In cold and wet recycling with CR, the new technology what we have introduced, we are using 100% existing material. These are all sustainable technologies. Also, stabilizers what we are using for rural roads and surface mining which we are doing for last 20 years in India where we are doing away with drilling, blasting and loading with one single machine.

Wrap recycling and cold milling is another application which is already in India. We are also very activity in asphalt plants though it is not in India as of today. There is lot of technology on sustainability associated with our brand Benning oven and we were the first to introduce the hydrogen burner for asphalt plants. We were the first in the world to introduce using old waste burning in burner.

How do you look at the year ahead?

Last year was a fantastic year for us. It grew our business by more than 50% in Indian market. Exports grew well by 30-40% and this year we are expecting 10-15% growth because we could lose a quarter because of elections.

Globally things have slowed down a bit. We have to see how it goes because today for us the international market is as important as India as 50% of what we produce in Pune is exported to almost 85 countries.