Hindustan Motors To Expand Earthmoving Equipment Unit
Hindustan Motors (HM), flagship of the G P Birla-C K Birla group, has announced major expansion plans for its earthmoving equipment division (EED), to be effected over a four-year period at the cost of Rs 35 crore.
The company will also launch a 20 tonne-excavator, the Hindustan 6021, this year, for which it will set up production facilities at a cost of Rs 15 crore. Larger-size crawler tractors will also be introduced soon.
The division has technical collaborations with Caterpillar of the United States for heavy earthmoving equipment and with Fermec of the United Kingdom for backhoe loaders.
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The company plans to double the manufacturing capacity at Trivallur near Chennai and in Pondicherry, by 2000. The capacity at the Trivallur plant, which makes dumpers, loaders and crawler tractors will be raised from 400 units to 650 units while the capacity at the Pondicherry plant, which makes backhoe loaders will be raised from 230 units to 600 units per annum.
P Balakrishnan, executive vice president of the division said the next economic boom in the country will come with the liberalisation of the infrastructure sector.
The government is going to give lot of impetus to the construction of roads, ports etc by the private sector in order to de-bottleneck the Indian economy. Added to this is the opening up of the mining sector by the various state governments to international and national mining giants, he added.
All this is going to lead to large scale demand for earthmoving equipment and we expect it to grow by 25 per cent per annum for the next few years. As part of our business strategy to not only maintain our leadership position but also to increase our marketshare, Hindustan Motors has planned to raise the manufacturing capacity from the current 630 units to 12450 units by the year 2000.
The company has set up a fully integrated Engineering Research and Development Centre (ERDC) in Tiruvallur.
The company's earth moving equipment division has also undertaken business process re-engineering at its manufacturing units, aimed at cell-based manufacturing architecture, natural grouping and lean organisational structure.
With our excellent research and development (R&D) facilities and total quality management (TQM) programme, we have achieved the distinction of being the first Indian manufacturer of earthmoving equipment to secure the comprehensive ISO 9001 certification for design, manufacture and service of our entire range of products, Balakrishnan added.