Having established a foothold in Bahrain’s market since it set up an office in the country in 2018, one of the top 10 lift manufacturers in India is keenly eyeing the leisure and entertainment sectors of the regional market.

Escon Express Lifts, which was set up in Bahrain as a joint venture by Express Lifts India, believes it is well poised to cater to the requirements of this sector with its diverse choice of lifts, its ability to customise products to clients’ requirements and the hygiene issues its products address.

For instance, it is currently supplying lifts for Masaya, a Spanish restaurant located near the Gulf Hotel in Adliya.  Escon Express Lifts has supplied a dumbwaiter for the ground-plus-two-level restaurant, installation of which was due to start last month (August).

The project required the company to carry out customisation as per customer requests due to the space constraints of the restaurant premises, Ramprasath Parthasarathi, Chairman and Managing Director of Escon Express Lifts, tells Gulf Construction.

Escon’s sales staff ... driving business in the region.

“We are among the few companies in the country that can provide proper solutions for these types of space constraint issues,” he says.

The Spanish restaurant project is among a number of new developments in Bahrain where elevators from Escon Express Lifts have been or are being installed. 

“We have completed a lot of projects and some are ongoing, which we expect to finish by the last quarter of this year,” he says.

An interesting product that would address the parking space limitations faced by projects in the leisure, entertainment and hospitality sectors is its Car Stacker lift, which Escon Express Lifts intends to promote aggressively in the market.

“Escon Express Lifts plans to launch its Car Stacker lifts in the Bahrain market to address the lack of parking space especially at restaurants, high-rise buildings and villas particularly in the major cities of the country. The benefits of these stackers are that they occupy less space, enabling more cars to be parked in a given footprint with this cost-effective system,” he explains.

The hydraulically-operated car stacker parking systems for two cars are designed for indoor and outdoor installations.

Meanwhile, Escon Express Lifts has been receiving a lot of enquiries for its lift models featuring touchless control and car operating and landing operating panels (COP and LOP) and X-cloud options as they respond to the increasing need to ensure optimum personal hygiene.

“While the current Covid -19 pandemic has put a damper on the elevators sector, Escon Express Lifts has been quick to respond to market requirements for greater hygiene control and is now offering several choices to address these needs. We offer elevator models featuring touchless operations where you can use your mobile phones to operate the elevators without touching the buttons and with their smart controller X-cloud, you can monitor elevator functions online,” he explains.

Ramprasath says the company has secured a number of projects featuring touchless control and COP and LOP with X-cloud options.

In order to expand its business and increase its market share, Escon Express Lifts is in the process of recruiting new staff both in Bahrain – which serves as the Middle East head office – and elsewhere in the Gulf.

“At the moment, we are recruiting staff for our Saudi branch. In addition, during the first and second quarters of 2022, we intend to recruit staff for our Oman and Kuwait offices,” he says.

Plans to set up a factory in Bahrain in conjunction with Express Lifts India are still very much in place, he says. “We are discussing with our partners in India and are planning to set up our factory by 2025 in Bahrain,” Ramprasath states.

Express Lifts India, which was founded in 1995 in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, has a manufacturing capacity of 1,500 lifts per year and has to date installed more than 35,000 elevators. The company recently held its unique event “Vision launch 2026”, during which it unveiled its goal of making Express Lifts one of India’s top companies by 2026, and outlined new products and services.