Murugappa's Tube Investments plans to set up truck body building plants

TMT bars & Truck Body Building businesses are more like venture capital investments at the incubatory stage, says management

Tube Investments of India, the flagship company of the Murugappa Group, plans to set up plants to build truck body parts, aiming to shift from the outsourced model with its own manufacturing.

The company believes in a business battling weak vendors, a depressed market and the goods and services tax (GST) it can do better with manufacturing facilities in Chennai, Bawal, Chakkan and Kolkata.

Vellayan Subbiah, managing director of Tube Investments, said truck bodybuilding and TMT steel bars were like venture capital investments that need time to grow. They will "not have any significant impact either on our top line or bottom line in the near term.”

The company’s three main verticals are engineering, metal-formed products and bicycles and it caters to automotive, railways, construction, mining, and agriculture. "Over the next 3-5 years' timeframe, there is a lot of opportunity for TII in the present mix of business it is in and some of the businesses that we intend to get TII into in the future as well. Growth will have to come from both organic and potentially inorganic means over that time period," said Subbiah, in a communication to shareholders.

TII's revenue in 2019-20 was Rs 2,258 crore as against Rs 2,896 crore in 2018-19. It started an optic lens business and aims to increase production by next year.