Telco Construction Equipment Company Ltd (Telcon), the 60:40 joint venture between Tata Motors and Hitachi Construction Machinery Co Ltd (of Japan), on Tuesday launched a set of lubricants under the Telcon brand name “to enhance the life of the construction & mining equipments it manufactures”.
Telcon has entered into a tie-up with Mumbai-based Savita Chemicals Ltd for producing its own range of ?genuine lubricants? which include three variants of hydraulic oil, a universal oil for backhoe loaders, an engine oil, a gear oil, a coolant and a heavy duty grease for the Telcon range of excavators, wheel loaders and back hoe loaders.
Savita Chemicals has Idemitsu (of Japan) as a technology partner in its lubricant blending business.
So far Telcon had been recommending certain brands of Idemitsu as well as Castrol for use as lubricants on its equipments.
Telcon which in its 10 years of existence has sold around 40,000 construction, mining and other equipment said the lubricants, apart from being normally sold in the market, are to be marketed and distributed through the company?s existing network of 40 dealers and 108 retailers of its equipments around the country, which have service centres attached to them.
Stressing the need for use of right lubricants in expensive engineering equipments, Telcon managing director Ranaveer Sinha, who launched the lubricants, said chances of the company earning a bad name as an equipment manufacturer increased manifold if a wrong selection of lubricants was made by customers.
?It therefore becomes our duty to educate customers in selecting the right lubricants as also in making them available at their doorstep,? said Sinha.
The company is offering three grades of hydraulic oils which need to be replaced at different intervals of 1,500, 2,500 and 4,000 hours, with the longer lasting ones coming at a premium.
Industry sources say the market size of oils & lubricants that go into the upkeep of construction, mining and other equipments being manufactured by Telcon and its competitors like JCB, Caterpillar, etc, is around Rs 300 crore.
Telcon, according to deputy general manager (service & spare parts) Sandeep Aggarwal, is eyeing a market share of 10% (Rs 30 crore) in the first year which he expects to double in the next three years.