Rajesh Rajgor goes behind the storylines to trace the team in charge of the heavy-duty transport segment at SSAB in India that presents the right grades of high-strength steel to commercial vehicle truck OEMs, CV bodybuilders, mining transporters and logistics companies
SSAB Swedish Steel India Private Limited was introduced in India in the year 2009. Since then, the SSAB team has been actively involved in working with various key projects for major truck OEMs and commercial vehicle bodybuilding industries across the country. Over the last few years, the realisation and use of high-strength steel amongst vehicle OEMs, truck-trailer and bus bodybuilders have increased.
The primary reasons are light weight due to strict legal regulations, companies looking for fuel saving, superior return on investments (ROI), increase in the life expectancy of the body, and meeting technical demands situations. This has led to many claiming to be providing the original Hardox® and Strenx® high-strength steel in India, which is a brand of Nordic-based SSAB, a Swedish steel company. This article traces the people in charge of SSAB in India and how they help customers develop the right products using SSAB’s high-strength steel.
Evaluating Customer’s Exact Needs
Ramanujam Saravanan is a senior level truck application engineer with strong acumen and a dedicated 24+ years of career stint in developing lightweight product solutions for medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicle super-structures across India and the Middle East market. Saravanan works under the mentorship of SSAB Technical Director Gerard Piedra who offers support and guidance from Spain, Barcelona. Says Saravanan: “Each day we receive various enquiries from our customers mainly focusing on developing application-based lightweight product solutions. Each and every customer’s enquiry is unique and technically challenging too.”
Some of the key challenging projects which SSAB in India has come across in the past two years include tippers for salt transportation, tippers for hot steel slag transportation, moving floor truck bodies and trailers, truck-mounted cranes, transit mixers, boom pumps, refuse compactors, refuse ejection trailers, live bottom trailers, container tipping frame trailers, side tipping trailers, heavy-duty dump trucks – rock and overburden, bolted tipper bodies, lightweight cement bulkers and lightweight steel containers’ bodies and haulage bodies.
Importance of Body Structures
It can therefore be seen that body performance, aesthetics of the body design and improved wear service life are at present the main items differentiating between competing vehicles. The total weight of the vehicle is to a large extent determined by its structural weight. In commercial vehicles, the body contributes 40-60% of the total vehicle weight. Hence, the payload of the vehicle is again largely determined by the un-laden weight of the vehicle and body. Thus, reduction in body weight improves the payload carrying capacity of each vehicle, reduces fuel consumption and improves wear service life, among many other factors.
In short, SSAB helps its customers to develop products using high-strength steel. Along with its customers, the company also analyzes the key benefits of upgrading its traditional mild steel design to improved high-strength steel designs. Its products’ solutions include the following key benefits. At the end, all these key tangible and intangible benefits are translated into USPs for the customers.
• Design and develop lightweight product solutions
• Improved product performance
• Improved wear service life
• Improved fuel savings
• Less maintenance
• Improved production efficiency
• Eco–upgraded
• Quick return on investments.
Saravanan asserts: “Our products are lighter than mild steel bodies which help the end customers (fleet operators) to carry more payloads, reduce fuel consumption, improve performance, and spend less on maintenance with increased wear service life. Our products have lesser number of parts and they are lighter in weight due to which they are easier to handle, assemble and complete the job in less labour hours and overall production cost.”
Evolved Ecosystem
SSAB’s expertise in high-strength steel stems from its continuous research and development in the field. The company has state-of-the-art research and development centres in Sweden, China and the US through which it focuses on developing innovative and path-breaking products for a variety of applications and markets across the globe. “Apart from the research and development support we also have two knowledge service centres – one in SSAB Europe and the other in SSAB Sweden. These centres also support our customers with their technical or upgrading projects. Within the knowledge service centres we have dedicated experts for helping our customers in achieving various parameters related to welding, cutting, bending, machining, wear, corrosion resistance, structural, simulations, fatigue and production efficiency. This is actually quite in-depth technical support,” points out Saravanan.
Commercial Support
Besides supporting the design and development efforts, the company provides valuable training and support to help bring high-strength steel products to the market in order for customers to do better business and have more visibility in a highly competitive business environment. The comprehensive support combined with co-branding programs enables clients to leverage the benefits of its trusted brands and maximises the sales and marketing efforts. SSAB in India has dedicated steel stocks in Chennai and Mumbai from where it caters to a demand of about 12,000 MT per annum for all requirements across India.
From stockyards, the local GST billing is done along with MTC directly from SSAB to end customers. Products like Hardox® and Strenx® are available only as strips with width less than 1,500 mm and plates up to 3,500 mm width. The company does not have other product forms currently in India such as coils, tubes or rolled channels. For heavy-duty transport segment it sells only though its own stockyards, thus eliminating dealers, agents or stockists of any kind. Orders can also be placed directly through the mills in Sweden and the material is delivered to ports in India such as Chennai, Mumbai or Nhava Sheva on CIF basis. In such cases, customised thickness and dimensions are possible. For transport customers the company also brings in material based on fixed schedules and services them on GIT basis from its stockyards. Meanwhile, SSAB has discontinued selling Domex grade steel in India for more than three years and has instead re-branded it as Strenx which is far more superior to Domex. Don Bosco, Regional Sales Manager (Transport Segment), shares: “We are not only supporting clients with right material selection, thickness and designing products but also provide material on trials.”
“With the trial use they can understand the complete benefits of developing products using high-strength steel. This ensures that a customer’s production start-up is very efficient and successful. The customer then shares the feedback for review and improvement. With the stocks available in Chennai and Mumbai, the customer can order from quantity as small as one sheet directly from us with the full assurance of an original SSAB product i.e. Hardox and Strenx,” he adds.
Stronger, Lighter and Sustainable World Together with its customers, SSAB goes further than anyone else in realising the full potential of lighter, stronger and more durable steel products. SSAB special steels add value to a customer’s business and the company is confident that with their new product range and technical and commercial offerings it can establish a strong foothold in the Indian heavy-duty transport segment.