Crusher plants of 250 tph are seeing the most demand, according to Onkar Sapre, Country Head, Sales & Marketing, Taurian Engineering, who is of the opinion that machines of this capacity shall see strong demand in 2019 followed by plants of 300 tph. That said, crushers of 150 tph have their own set of clients. Demand for medium to bigger jaw and cone crushers; high-performance, oil-lubricated VSIs, especially those making manufactured sand, and more efficient, higher-capacity screens (circular and linear motion) solutions are on the rise, says R S Raghavan, Managing Director, Proman Infrastructure Services. In keeping with this trend, Proman has recently launched jaw and cone crushers of capacity exceeding 300 tph, and dry and wet fine screening solutions for the sand and aggregate segment.“Companies engaged in the construction of 40-plus km of pavement quality concrete roads per day are demanding three and four-stage crusher plants of 300-500 tph capacity to produce fine aggregates (-) 20 mm and sand plants,” says V Venkataramana, Vice-President, Marketing, Puzzolana, “while in hilly areas and greenfield projects, crawler-mounted crushers with three-stage application, jaw, cone and VSI with screens are in demand.”Welspun Enterprises in Tamil Nadu is using a 250-tph, three-stage, crawler-mounted crushing plant with a primary jaw station, secondary cone crusher with a screening station and a tertiary VSI crusher with a screening station. “This marks the first time a three-stage crusher has been mounted on a crawler crane for the customer to achieve advanced crushing conveniently,” says Venkataramana. Puzzolana has recently released a 1000-tph primary jaw crusher, a high-capacity cone crusher and a VSI on a crawler.Terex Powerscreen Business has successfully launched a 300 tph range of crushing and screening equipment to complement its 200 tph regular range.Besides the trend to use bigger crushers and 300 tph plants instead of 200 tph plants to meet the major requirement of 0-20 mm aggregates, Subhasis Das, Vice-President, Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, India, believes the increased government impetus to develop railways, roads, power, airports, ports, water and sanitation could grow the overall infrastructure sector at a CAGR of ~9+ per cent over the next five years; in turn, generating demand for more innovative and technologically advanced intelligent machines with higher productivity and reduced downtime and operation cost. In general, “the Indian crushing and screening industry is becoming more focused on quality aggregate of the right gradation and shape that can reduce cement consumption and ensure high-quality infrastructure (primarily roads),” adds Das.- CHARU BAHRI