Kalmar Industries has been awarded a five-year service contract for maintenance and operations by Gateway Terminals India (GTI).

GTI of Mumbai, India, ordered 29 Kalmar E-One RTGs in March 2006, 13 of which were scheduled for delivery this month and the rest were to arrive by November 15. The order was one of Kalmar's largest Indian orders (Forkliftaction.com News #201).

The service contract will apply to the 29 cranes.

Under the contract, Kalmar will supply GTI with preventative and breakdown maintenance, engineering support, daily inspections, spare parts supply and equipment operators. Kalmar said in a statement it planned to provide more than 100 maintenance specialists and equipment operators trained to international standards, to do three shifts per day.

GTI is a joint venture between APM Terminals and Container Corporation of India.

Kalmar has been planning the expansion of its Indian service offering by including port cities like Chennai, Cochin and Calcutta in its sales & service network, and employing more technicians (Forkliftaction.com News #264).

In November 2005, Kalmar set up an Indian subsidiary after acquiring majority shareholding in its Indian agent, Indlift (Forkliftaction.com News #234). Before the acquisition, Indlift employed 18 people in Mumbai, New Delhi, Vizag and Bangalore. Today, there are nearly 20 office-based employees and; 20 service engineers and 125 subcontracted engineers around India.