Sanghvi movers counts the likes of Suzlon among its

clients Photo:SAM PANTHAKY/AFP/Getty Images/NTB

scanpix

Indian wind slump in sharp

focus as crane supplier takes
hit
by Andrew Lee 15 August 2017

The unexpected scale of the slump in Indias wind market came into sharp focus when the
countrys largest crane hire business blamed it for a sharp downturn in its own fortunes.
Sanghvi Movers, which operates a eet of 428 cranes, told its investors it had seen a huge
reduction in the scale of turbine installations in the current 2017/18 nancial year, hitting its
business hard in a sector that provides the majority of its revenues.
The crane supplier saw sales more than halve in the April-June rst quarter of the current scal
year and squarely blamed a drop in wind mill installation [that] is beyond our expectation and
would likely impact our business volume and protability in the current nancial year.
The company lists major Indian wind players among its client list on its webiste, including
Siemens Gamesa, Vestas, GE, Suzlon and Welspun.
India installed 5.4GW in the 2016/17 scal year, and as recently as
Aprils Windergy conference some in the sector were condent about
beating that gure. But industry commentators are now talking about
just 1GW-1.5GW being added by the end of March 2018.

Indian minister oats Sanghvi and others supplying the market point to the scaling back of
monthly wind bidding key government incentives and the abrupt transition from feed-in
as rst PPAs signed tariff (FIT) to auction-based procurement as creating a perfect storm
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for the wind sector albeit one that they hope will be short-lived.

The staging of Indias rst competitive wind auction early this year
and the discovery of a lower than expected winning price level of 3.46
rupees/kWh ($0.052/kWh) effectively halted the state-based FIT procurement that had driven
the market up until then, with regional offtakers unwilling to enter new agreements without the
chance to test the market with a tender of their own.
The gap while the central and state auction systems ramp up to full speed has left the market
facing a hiatus that has hit all ends of the supply chain, from the likes of Sanghvi Movers to
turbine OEM Siemens Gamesa, which blamed the slump in the India market for a disappointing
debut set of quarterly nancial results.
The wind supply chain now hopes the Indian government and its states will swiftly advance the
level of auctions needed to keep the country on track to meet its 60GW by 2022 ambitions,
rendering the current slowdown a painful blip but nothing more.