From the CMD's Desk – Industry outlook and way forward on mitigating challenges & leveraging opportunities.
It gives us immense pleasure to reach out to all of you and share a few thoughts about our plans for the near future and the market outlook from a near term perspective.
We, at Crown Lifters, continuously put our best efforts in building an organization which is committed to serve the nation with our best in class services in construction equipment rentals, namely Cranes, Aerial lift platforms, Piling rigs etc., with strong commitment to provide a safe and progressive future driven environment for all our staff members and stakeholders.
Over the years, we have demonstrated our deep domain expertise and core competence across sectors like Power, Refinery, Cement, Steel and Ports to name a few. As the Government draws its attention towards new airports, railways, metros, sea links, roads, bridges etc., we would like to en-cash these opportunities by engaging ourselves with Cranes, Aerial lift platforms and Piling rigs to cater to them. With various ongoing and new projects, and the large bandwidth of our operations, we are extremely well placed to tap the opportunities within all states in India. We will keep adding new and modern technology equipments to our fleet to meet the current and future requirements from time to time.
Going forward, we are also looking at opportunities from within our network to work in international markets, namely Middle East and Africa. This will enable us to expand our client base, turnaround time between two projects and margins. Also, this is an opportunity to diversify and grow our fleet and gain experience in different markets.
In the last 3 years, we have seen a growth of around 15-20% year-on-year and the same can be sustained going forward, given the present Government begins timely funding of the newly announced projects.
With the completion of a mega project like the Reliance Refinery J3 project expansion, we will see a softer second half of 2017. Most of our released cranes will be taken back to the workshop for overhauling and servicing before they are placed back in the market for hiring again.
We see a lot of new order inflow post settlement of GST during the quarter to end of September 2017 and post good monsoon as expected. The roll out of GST is a very positive one for our industry as our cranes will now seamlessly move between state borders without delays and cumbersome documentation procedures. This will also help us find better transport rates as they will now not lose too much time at the state borders.
With a lot of manufacturers making India their preferred hub for manufacturing cranes and accessories, it will help us buy equipments at a better price and also get full rebate of GST against purchase of such assets which would not have been possible in the case of import and while paying customs duty.
We have always been a financially prudent company and our bank interest component has been coming down since the last 2 to 3 quarters, thus improving our margins and giving us a competitive edge in the market.
With Asia's largest grass-root refinery being announced at Ratnagiri (MH) by (IOCL,BPCL,HPCL jointly), we will be one of the bigger beneficiaries as supplier of crawler cranes which are required in large numbers from low to high capacity in these kind of projects. Once one such big project is announced, we get nearly 90%+ fleet bookings for the next 3 to 4 years. This will also help us expand and diversify our fleet, which we intend to do in the near future.
We are now engaging experienced industry professionals in the field of operations and marketing to bring better services to client and business for the organization from various sectors and geographies.
We aim to further strengthen our IT infrastructure and make our systems fool proof by continuing to adapt to reliable and professional licensed software in the near future for our ERP/ CRM initiatives.
We would also like to say a big THANK YOU to all our stakeholders for their continuous support and commitment that has contributed to the prosperity and growth of Crown Lifters.
Wishing all of you a great year ahead!
Exploring India opportunities and diversifying into high margin Gulf and African markets.
Innovation Insights - New Liebherr boom pushes the limits.