When Essar acquired a crane almost 50 years ago to execute its first ever project, little did anyone know that the machine will be only the first of a 5,000-strong equipment bank.
The Essar Equipment Bank, or EEB, is quite a talking point in the Indian EPC (Engineering Procurement & Construction) sector. It is a collection of thousands of small-to-heavy duty equipment that Essar purchased over the years while it went about building out Rs 1.2 lakh crore of world-class industrial assets. And the EEB, a division of Essar Projects, is definitely among the largest equipment banks owned by any Indian company. The development of the EEB is also in line with Essar’s philosophy of forward and backward integrating its operations to reduce dependence on external suppliers.
So what is the kind of machinery that Essar owns as part of the EEB? Well, pretty much everything you might need to set up and operate a global scale industrial project—cranes, forklifts, trucks, tractors, earth-moving machinery and what have you!
The EEB has helped build some of India’s most valuable industrial assets. These include Essar Steel’s 10 million tonne integrated steel plant in Hazira, 20 million tonne pelletization plants at Paradip and Vizag, seven power plants of Essar Power aggregating 4,750 MW of generation capacity, 5,500 km of cross-country oil & gas, water and slurry pipelines, four terminals of Essar Ports with 160 million tonnes of cumulative capacity, and the 20 million tonne Essar Oil refinery in Vadinar,.
The EEB not only does duty for Essar companies but also offers its services to third parties—Indian and global clients who need equipment on hire, heavy-lift management, and operation and maintenance services.
EEB uses the Plant Maintenance/Enterprises Tool Management (PM/ETM) module from SAP for complete equipment management, taking care to maintain complete equipment records and data. The programme records and monitors the functionality of each equipment in real time. Once the equipment is defined, the programme keeps track of all its historical data for operations and maintenance—right from inception until it is disposed of in favour of a new machine. EEB ensures that the equipment is operated and maintained in accordance with OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) standards. For clients, it translates to the desired quality of work achieved within the desired timeframe.
EEB’s primary maintenance facilities are based out of Hazira and Vadinar in Gujarat, and Paradip in Odisha. These maintenance facilities are fully equipped to perform minor and major repairs. Besides maintenance facilities of its own, EEB has tie-ups with OEMs for extended warranties, Annual Rate Contracts (ARC) and Annual Maintenance Contracts (AMC) to ensure firm services and quick spare-parts availability at all the client project sites.
Besides state-of-the-art equipment support, EEB also provides manpower for operating and maintaining the sophisticated equipment at the project sites. The workforce is well experienced and trained by OEMs as per the client’s project requirements. This ensures seamless integration of EEB’s services with the client’s project management requirements.
