M&M to build engines in Bengal

"These manufacturing units are expected to be operational within a year. While the Chennai facility will have a capacity of 10,000 units per annum, the Kolkata unit will have a capacity of 5,000 units per annum", Sachin Nijhawan, deputy general manager (retail sales) of M&M's engine application business said.

Nijhawan did not disclose the investment figure for these two new facilities but said that M&M would be investing in the range of Rs 100-200 crore on its Powerol (engines and diesel generating sets) business by 2010.

The amount will be used in scaling up production capacity of diesel generating (DG) sets, manufacturing higher capacity DG sets and also on research and development. At present, M&M manufactures DG sets at its plants in Delhi and Pune.

The combined capacity of these two plants is 36,000 units per annum and the company plans to scale it upto 60,000 units per annum out of which 40,000 units will be manufactured in Pune and the balance 20,000 units in Delhi. Plans are also afoot to export some of these DG sets to South-East Asian nations and Africa in this fiscal.

M&M posted a turnover of Rs 565 crore from its Powerol business in 2007-08 and is eyeing a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore in this fiscal.

"In this fiscal we intend to start production of 250 KVA (kilo volt ampere) DG sets. The overall market for DG sets in India is around 2,00,000 units per annum and we have a market share of about 18 per cent. Eastern India with a sales volume of 800 units in 2007-08 accounted for about 15 per cent of our total sales and we expect the share of the eastern region to go upto 20-22 per cent in this fiscal", Nijhawan added.

As of now, M&M's Powerol DG sets are available at a range of 5-63 KVA and they come at a price of Rs 1.6 to Rs 5 lakh.