“Our strategy has finally worked”, says a confident Mr. Abhay Firodia, Chairman of MAN Force Trucks Private Ltd. “We had chalked out a two-fold strategy. The first was to introduce fuel-efficient, cost optimised haulage trucks. That strategy has been successful, and we have been able to sell good number of trucks and tippers in the last few months. The 2nd part of our strategy is to position more focussed products in the construction and mining segment. We have a complete range of tippers for mining and construction applications and those have performed exceedingly well in the marketplace”.
Mr. Firodia further says: “In fact we were geared up to sell more but our production was constrained because of the non-availability of fuel pumps from one of our supplier. Over the next 4 months, December 2009 to March 2010, we plan to focus on the haulage market and expect some numbers from this segment”.
MAN Force launched its trucks a couple of years back. In the initial years, the trucks were well received in the tipper and tractor trailer segment. But in the mass market haulage segment, the truck could not do well due to the price disadvantage. The product had to be re-engineered to suit the Indian market, which the company has successfully accomplished.
Mr. Firodia says: “Today, the cost effectiveness and reliability of our product has become well accepted as we now have a large number of satisfied customers across all product segments”.
The most important aspect, Mr. Firodia says, is that, “Our economy is beginning to look up, and with the enthusiasm one sees for investment now, whether it is mining, construction or haulage we should be seeing significant improvement in our numbers in the coming months”.
Exports has been one of the key area of focus for the JV. But due to the global recession, this has taken a hit. Still the company has done well in markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa.
“MAN has already fielded these vehicles in several markets, and the product has been well received with good repeat orders from several markets. Also MAN never had an 8X4 right hand drive tipper as part of its global portfolio of products. Now that we have an 8X4 tipper truck developed in India, this will help us in exports as well”, Mr. Firodia adds.
Currently in the tipper segment MAN Force offers a 16 tonne tipper, 25 tonne 6X4 tipper and 31 tonne 8X4 tippers. The company has already sold over 2,000 tippers in India. Jaihind, one of the group companies of Force Motors, has set up a tipper manufacturing unit in Pithampur close to the MAN Force facility, to supply tipper bodies for MAN trucks. This has already started operations and serial production will start in 2010, says Mr. Firodia. In 2010 MAN Force is expecting sales to reach a level of 500 trucks per month. For 2009-10 the target is to sell 3,000 trucks.
Finally, on the bus project, “we are moving ahead with the bus project and will launch inter-city coaches and city buses in early 2010”, he says.
