Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Oct 17, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Oct 17, 2003 |
|
|
|
|
|
Corporate
-
Diversification Tata Motors forays into bus body building Our Bureau
Coimbatore , Oct. 16 TATA Motors Ltd (TML) has entered the truck body building activity and the first customised vehicle has been delivered to a Coimbatore-based client for transportation of cement in bulk. The company plans to enter bus body building business in a big way from the first quarter of next fiscal and has already made a beginning by building bus bodies for smaller vehicles. Tracing the genesis of the move to manufacture customised vehicles for carrying bulk cargo, Mr Shyam Mani, General Manager, Commercial Vehicles-Sales, TML, Mumbai, said from being a vehicle manufacturer, the company felt that the time has come `to move up into transport solutions'. It created seven different divisions in its marketing group focussed on seven sectors of industries, one of which was cement. The idea was to interact with the cement producers to understand the problems of logistics so as to evolve cost effective transport solutions. A dedicated team is interacting with different user segments to develop products that met their requirements. The LPS 3516 EX Bulker model launched in Coimbatore was for cement industry, but could be used for transporting chemicals. He said the the company was focussed for supplying customised vehicles to other industries such as automobile, steel, petroleum and cold storage chains . He said the bulker enabled transportation of cement without any wastage and the delivery cost also would be viable compared to cement movement by rail as there would be no need to pack cement in bags. Asked about competition from private body builders in terms of cost, Mr Shyam Mani said private body building works would continue to be in business. But wherever specialised applications were needed, TML `could add value'. He expected the specialised trucks to account for about 6,000 vehicles in the current year for TML. Mr Shyam Mani said TML was also planning to enter the bus body building business by building a complete range of buses — from city ride vehicles to the upper-end luxury AC coaches covering 15 to 19 different sizes. The plan was to offer fully built, ready-to-use buses by the operators. On the lead-time needed to deliver customised vehicles, he said for the bulkers delivered in Coimbatore the time span would be about six weeks. Some like city ride buses could be picked up ex-showroom. Highly specialised applications that needed a lot of design may need up to three months for delivery. Asked how TML hoped to compete with the unorganised sector that has a significant presence in bus body building, Mr Shyam Mani said the advantage of sourcing completely built buses from the TML was that the investment would start generating returns from the next day of purchase.
Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication
|
Stories in this Section |
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | Home |
Copyright © 2003, The
Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu Business Line
|