Russian heavy equipment maker Uralmash set to enter India's steel & mining sector.

Russian heavy equipment maker Uralmash is set to enter India's steel and mining sector. It has decided to form a joint venture with Noida-based SRB International, in what is poised to be the first Indo-Russian venture in manufacturing heavy equipment.

'We are looking at a joint venture company with SRB which will be formalized in next two to three months. The equity shareholding between the two partners are being discussed but it could be a 50:50 partnership,' Vladimir Pugach head of exports at Uralmash said.

Uralmash and SRB have had a decade-long alliance for supply and servicing equipment for clients like Coal India, SAIL, NMDC, JSPL etc. in India. The jv will initially focus on servicing existing clients and will increasingly look at assembly and manufacture of spare parts of some key equipment for the complex heavy machines used in mines etc. 'Our clients want local support and such equipment require local customization. With India's mining and steel sector likely to grow we are thus keen to have a manufacturing base in the country,' Pugach said. Uralmash is looking at investing close to $5- 6 million very year in the new company Uralmash SRB India, he added. 'These large equipment, which cost up to Rs 300-400 crore, take nearly 2 years to manufacture and transporting them is difficult. A local manufacturing base thus helps in cutting down costs to an extent,' A P Choudhury, former CMD of RINL, now an advisor to SRB said.

The new company is eyeing a part of orders worth Rs 2000 crore that is up for grabs from Coal India for new 'draglines', a key equipment used in opencast coal mines, at the Northern Coalfields, where it could face likely competition from the likes of US giant caterpillar and Indian majors like HEC among others.

'While orders from steel plants are also slated to pick up, mining giant NMDC, one of our existing clients, is also poised to expand in a big way,' SRB International group director Bharat Gandhi said. NMDC, which has targeted a three-fold rise in production to 100 million tonne by 2020, uses Uralmash crushers at its mines at Bailadila and Donimalai.

ET