Ammann, a family-owned Swiss maker of road-construction and asphalt equipment based in Langenthal, Switzerland, is turning its factory in Mehsana, in western India, into a global export base group chief executive Hans-Christian Schneider told Mint in an interview.
The India plant already ships products to Europe, and Schneider said the company sees no reason it could not eventually export from India to the United States as well. Ammann’s European plants already build equipment configured for both European and North American markets, he said, which makes it easier to replicate that approach in India. Exports currently generate over 20 percent of the India business’s annual revenue.
Ammann entered India by acquiring road-equipment maker Apollo Construction Equipment Ltd, first taking a 70% stake before assuming full control. The India business employs 1,000 people directly, Schneider said, and recorded revenue of $115 million
Company-wide, Ammann brought in $800 million in revenue in 2025, Schneider said. Schneider, who leads a business now in its sixth generation of family ownership, said turning the India plant into a global hub requires two things: adapting products for the markets they are sold into, and raising quality standards across manufacturing, processes and customer service.
A trade agreement is helping. The India-European Free Trade Association Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement, which took effect in late 2025, commits $100 billion in investment into India over fifteen years and is expected to create 1 million direct jobs, in exchange for broader market access for India’s exports to Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Schneider said the agreement has helped attract investment, but that the next step needs to be closer alignment between India’s product standards and those of other countries, since certification differences, particularly around safety requirements, still add work before a product built in India can be sold abroad.
India’s construction-equipment market has cooled since an earlier boom. According to data from the Indian Construction Equipment Manufacturers’ Association cited by Mint, industry sales in India grew 3% to 126,961 units in the fiscal year ending March 2025, while exports grew 10% to 13,230 units over the same period. Schneider said growth has slowed from prior years but remains ahead of mature European markets, and that conflict in West Asia pushed up fuel and bitumen prices and cooled activity for a stretch after the first quarter of 2026, before conditions stabilized.
Why this matters: Ammann’s shift is a preview of a broader pattern American and European executives are likely to see more of: a foreign manufacturer that built India capacity to serve India’s own market recasting that same factory as a source of supply for the rest of the world. India is becoming a factory for the world.
