We are seeing an overall upsurge in demand with the Government’s continued focus on infrastructure projects under MoRTH, and for ports, airports, railways, real-estate and industrial projects, avers Raj Shrivastav, Executive in Charge, Crushing & Screening, TIL Ltd. According to Vivek Bhatia, MD & CEO, thyssenkrupp Industries India, the roads sector is generating the most demand for crushers. In particular, more crushing and screening units are in demand “where greenfield road projects are being taken up and expansion projects (two to four-laning and four to six-laning) are being taken up, as these are increasing the demand for aggregates,” says Ramesh Palagiri, Managing Director and CEO, Wirtgen India. “New urban infrastructure projects also add up to the demand for aggregates and, consequently, for crushing and screening equipment,” he adds. “Also, construction activity across the country has boosted various mining projects in the East, which is also boosting demand.” Financial institutions coming forward to refinance stalled urban infrastructural development such as smart cities, metro and mega power projects is a big positive, observes Bhatia. “Power plants, coal mining and such sectors have also shown tremendous growth potential.” Infra projects and the boost in housing purchases are triggers for sustained growth in demand, says RS Raghavan, Managing Director, Proman Infrastructure Services. Widespread riverbed sand mining bans have increased the need for manufactured sand (M-sand) and plaster sand (P-sand) and thereby for crushing equipment. Currently, India consumes about 800 million mt of sand annually, of which only about 5 per cent is M-sand, Shrivastav points out. Prospects for growth in the crusher market Udayan Chakravorty, Cluster Head, Sales and Marketing, Taurian Minerals Processing expects 40 per cent growth in turnover in FY 2020 and about 80 per cent growth in orders booked. Piero Guizzetti, CEO, MB Crusher India believes projects like Bharatmala and Sagarmala among others will boost construction activities. Several ongoing road projects in the country are expected to boost demand for crushed and screened materials. In Shrivastav’s view, Bharatmala, new metro rail projects in cities and the bullet train project will drive demand as well as renewed investment in the mining sector, mainly in central, western and eastern India. “With the NHAI targeting building 41 km of roads per day, up from 17 km five years ago, we anticipate sizeable demand,” says Vadiraj Pappu, Business Head, Mining & Construction Equipment Division, Voltas. Ore mining primarily makes use of track-mounted screens or, alternatively, wheel-mounted screens, says Chakravorty. “However, this market has been near zero for many years. Opening the mining sector would usher in exponential growth.” Following this, he expects the demand to become so high that present industry capacity would fall short by a huge margin. Also, if the focus of the Government were to expand beyond roads and bridges to include dams and ports, demand would grow further. Crusher solutions to watch out for Companies with huge stocks of unsold aggregate are looking to convert the material to usable manufacturing sand, according to Gopi Krishna More, Managing Director, Torsa Machines. As this requires a mobile sand manufacturing plant, Torsa has designed a compact sand manufacturing plant on a skid-mounted chassis fitted with a receiving hopper, VSI and screen with integrated hydraulically controlled conveyors. Running this plant near the aggregate stock can convert it into usable sand at a minimum transfer cost. Torsa will launch this mobile sand manufacturing plant at Excon 2019 in December, says More. thyssenkrupp will release a new crusher, the RBC 4000, at EXCON 2019. Also, at thyssenkrupp India, a fully mobile crawler-mounted solution for crushing and screening is currently under development. Proman will be launching a dry process sand plant to produce plaster and concrete sand in spec, shares Raghavan. - CHARU BAHRI