French player Fayat Group to make road building equipments at Sanand.

French road building equipment maker, Fayat Group announced commissioning of its first plant in India at Sanand near Ahmedabad built at an initial investment of Euro 16 million (approx Rs. 115 crore).

The newly-built facility will make, in the first phase, asphalt mixing plants with the capacity of 25-30 plants per annum, while the company would add other products in future. Besides catering to the domestic market, the company also looks to export asphalt mixing plants to the South East Asian markets in coming months.

The Euro 3.6-billion Fayat Group offers products such as asphalt mixing, paving, compaction and recycling plants through its Road Building Equipment Division in the price range of Rs. 3.5 crore to Rs. 9 crore. The Sanand plant is spread across an area of 60,000 square metres.

The group is represented in India through its Marini brand, which has some of the major infrastructure players like L&T, Ramky Infra and KMC as its clients.

Blesson Varghese, director, Marini India, Fayat Group, said, 'The Indian market for asphalt mixing plants is close to 450-500 per annum including 300-350 continuous mixing plants. This offers a huge opportunity for Fayat even as we look to expand our installed capacity to 70-75 plants per annum in next 4-5 years.' The company expects to achieve a turnover of around Rs. 20 crore in the 2-3 months after the commissioning of the facility.

The Group is in talks with Public Works Department (PWD) for local infrastructure projects as well as with the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and other government agencies for increased awareness of asphalt built roads.

'The cost advantage of setting up a manufacturing plant locally tends to be around 25-30 per cent. Through the Sanand plant, we are now closer to our customers and suppliers. In near future, we can look at exporting to other South East Asian markets from here rather than from Europe,' said Jorg Unger, President, Fayat Road Building Equipment.

HBL