Nano vendors will shift to Sanand by March

Nearly 60 vendors will move to the vendor park at Tata Nano’s Sanand plant by March next year. The rollout of the car is set for the January to March quarter, and vendors will feed the plant at existing locations till they shift.

A company spokesperson confirmed the production planning was on schedule and the rollout is on track. Sanand is about 35 km from Ahmedabad.

Rajkot-based Amul Industries, exclusive suppliers of connecting rods and crankshafts for the Nano, said the company was in the process of shifting its machinery parts from Rajkot to Sanand.

“We plan to invest around Rs 15 crore in the Sanand vendor park,” said S Santoki, managing director. He added that the company had now scaled up procurement of parts, after some variation last year.

Other major vendors like Bosch India, who are supplying brake solutions, fuel injection systems, the electronic control unit, starter motor and generator for the Nano, also confirmed they had started working on the vendor park facility.

“It will take some time before we can start full production from there and we will continue to supply from our existing locations now,” said a company spokesperson. Bosch will commission a brake assembly facility at Sanand, while the fuel injection system will be manufactured in Bangalore.

The vendor park was the centre of the main dispute at Nano’s original site in West Bengal with the give-us-our-land-back agitationists led by the Trinamool Congress in Singur, which led to the withdrawal of the project from the state. Tata Motors had planned to have the vendor park adjacent to the production site, to keep the logistics’ expenses under control for the low-cost car.

The Sanand plant will manufacture 350,000 cars annually in a phased expansion. Some vendors have decided to wait till production on site picks up. Exide Industries, who have designed a customised battery for the Nano, had earlier indicated to Business Standard that it will currently supply from its Shyamnagar plant near Singur in West Bengal until the Sanand production volumes are big enough to support an on-site facility.