L&T’s Construction and Mining Machinery business turns 75!

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has completed the platinum jubilee of one of its oldest businesses, the Construction & Mining Machinery Business (CMB). The business has supplied over 60,000 units of various equipment in India during its 75-year association with the construction and 

mining industry.

“L&T has a legacy of pioneering critical equipment needed for nation-building and has been at the forefront of indigenous development of engineering design and manufacturing capabilities,” says SN Subrahmanyan, CEO & Managing Director, Larsen & Toubro. “We are delighted that CMB has been fulfilling the formidable needs of the mining and construction sectors with innovative equipment and commendable service records for the last 75 years.”

“It has been our absolute commitment to serve valued customers over the past seven decades,” says Arvind K Garg, Executive Vice-President, L&T Construction & Mining Machinery. “L&T has pioneered and introduced global technologies, equipment and practices for the development of the nation. At this important juncture, we thank our customers for their association and patronage.”   

In 1973, the company introduced hydraulic excavators in collaboration with Poclain SA, France. This initiative needed efforts to establish a completely new concept in earthmoving and made L&T a strategic partner in infrastructure construction. Other collaborations included Albaret (France), JI Case (USA), Vibromax (Germany) and Detroit Diesel (USA). Later in 1998, Komatsu and L&T formed a JV to manufacture Komatsu’s state-of-the-art, world-class machines. Over the years, L&T introduced several models of excavators, such as PC71, PC130, PC300 and PC450 and built a large and loyal base of over 25,000 valued customers. L&T recently introduced Komatsu PC210-10M0 hydraulic excavator, which has been a runaway success and broken all records to become the fastest-growing model in the 22 tonne class. It reached the 1,000 mark in a 10-month period and is now well on its way to becoming the market leader.

As mineral mining expanded in India, Komatsu and L&T introduced large mining machines, such as dump truck HD785, dozer models D155 and D475, and excavator models PC1250 and PC2000. These machines have created new benchmarks in performance, productivity and long life at customer sites. L&T also delivered Komatsu’s mammoth 240 tonne class 830E dump trucks and 16 cum class PC3000 hydraulic excavators for mega-mining operations, which reinforced its unmatched capabilities developed over time.  

As coal mining companies started overburden removal by contractors to cater to the growing coal production requirement, a new segment of mining tippers emerged that matched very well with Komatsu’s PC450 excavator. L&T also formed an alliance with Scania to offer its latest generation tipper truck, which has since become highly popular in the mid-mining industry for its exceptional performance, unbeatable economy, operator comfort and safety.

To provide top-notch customer service and support the large population of construction and mining machines, L&T has focused on developing strong infrastructure for after-sales and service support. It now has six world-class service centres, a team of highly skilled and experienced service engineers, a central training centre, 30 dealerships for construction equipment and a network of parts depots across India. This has proved to be a real differentiator in machine uptime and utilisation.