The Hindu Business Line : Haldia to be manufacturing base for Russian UralAZ

URALAZ of Russia, a cross-country and offroad commercial vehicle supplier, has selected Haldia in West Bengal as its base for manufacturing latest commercial vehicles.

A joint venture company has been established under the name of Ural India Ltd (UIL) to undertake this Rs 500-crore project. The proposed joint venture is between Torgovyi Dom Autoural of Russia, West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) and UIL. The project will be based at Haldia, where an industrial site of 300 acres has been identified, out of which 100 acres has been taken for site development work in progress.

Prototype vehicles from UralAZ have arrived here to undertake market and product conformity test, while the joint venture company plans to start assembly operations in the next couple of months with trial production of 250 number of vehicles.

Once the trial run stabilises, the production will be increased to 7,000 numbers per shift a year.

According to an UIL source, the Haldia project will assemble and manufacture high capacity (10 tonne to 45 tonne) medium and heavy duty (230 horse power to 440 horse power) commercial vehicle having internationally accepted performance standards from cross-country, off-road and on-road applications.

Some of the potential customers include Indian Defence forces, mining industry, road construction industry, cement industry, fire fighting applications, cross-country transportation of food, water, and other perishable and non-perishable supplies. The vehicles will have many features hitherto not available on vehicles produced in India.

The UIL source said that the project, to begin with, will import 100 per cent component and spares for assembling purpose. Subsequently, it will source up to 80 per cent of its requirement of component and spares from local auto ancillary units. In fact, UralAZ has plans to treat India as a source for auto component for other countries.

It is stated that UralAZ, a part of RUSPROM Auto Group, has already established joint venture companies in China and Egypt, besides their manufacturing factories in Russia and alliances in Europe.

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