Tata Motors to focus on customizations for defence

Tata Motors has been the largest supplier of vehicles for the country's defence purposes since the 1950's and the automobile giant iscurrently focusing more on enhancing its defence portfolio.

Our sources revealed that the company is furthering strengthening itself in the defence department and is mainly concentrating on providing increased customization options to customers. While Tata Motors has a large base of products catering specially to the armed forces, the demand for special customization has been on the rise and that this what Tata Motors is aiming to fulfill. The Defence Solutions's existing range includes logistics, tactical and armoured vehicles, with each category having a number of products and variants within them. These include troop carriers, goods carriers, cargo trucks, weapon carriers, tank carriers, mine protected vehicles and missile launchers, to name a few and they come in 4x4, 6x6 and 8x8 configurations. The vehicles are manufactured across the five manufacturing facilities of Tata Motors at Pantnagar, Lucknow, Jamshedpur, Pune and Dharwad.

The defence vehicles contribute to almost 15 percent of the total commercial vehicles portfolio of Tata Motors and the company wants to increase its competence in this sphere. While a major part of the vehicles supplied are for logistical purposes, the focus is now shifting towards developing more combat vehicles. Tata Motors has a collaboration with SUPACAT, which is a UK-based company specializing in high mobility vehicles and will provide technical assistance to Tata Motors for its Light Armoured Multi-role Vehicle (LAMV) project, a combat vehicle based on a programme by the defence ministry.

Recently Tata motors has bagged an order for supply of 1200 trucks from the Indian Army and happens to besingle largest order awarded to an Indian company in land systems. The order is for supply of 1200 units of indigenously developed, high-mobility 6X6 multi-axle trucks, which is worth INR 900 crores. The deliveries are expected to start by December.

 

Source : MotorOctane