The Hindu Business Line : L&T lays foundation stone for campus at Coimbatore

The small and medium engineering industries of Coimbatore will get a boost with the engineering and construction major, Larsen and Toubro, getting closer to building the Rs 500-crore Coimbatore growth centre for light engineering manufacture, at Malumichampatti village near here, the foundation stone for which was laid today.

L&T's Malumichampatti campus will provide direct employment to around 1,200 people and will also prove a major gain for the large number of small and medium enterprises located in Coimbatore from whom the engineering major will outsource. This will also lead to providing indirect employment to about 5,000 people. Several top officials from L&T, including its Chairman and Managing Director, Mr A.M. Naik, were present at the ground-breaking ceremony.

The construction work at the 300-acre site will begin in another 30 days and is expected to be completed by April-May 2007. The units will start operation by June next year.

Coimbatore L&T campus will house four manufacturing outfits — power control equipment (switchgears), valves, toolroom/precision engineering and petrol dispensing system manufacturing.

L&T will bring the estimated Rs 500- crore investment in stagesover the next five years, Mr Naik told Business Line. Of the four manufacturing units, L&T is building simultaneously the facilities for the three specialities - switchgear, valves and precision engineering manufacture. As for the petrol dispensing system manufacture, since it requires adequate training of skills for the workers,

L& T has decided to start it in the second stage after imparting the skills. Pending the commissioning of its own production center here, L&T has started production of switchgears and valves out of rented units in Coimbatore

Mr Naik said his company is looking at developing the Coimbatore light engineering campus from the long-term perspective, for the next 20 years or so, and its decision to invest in Coimbatore is based on the presence of large pool of valueable technical manpower, renowned engineering institutions and the `right' work culture and infrastructure strengths available in the region.

To a specific question, Mr Naik ruled out the possibility of L&T locating its information technology operation in Coimbatore. "We are not planning for IT in Coimbatore. But we are planning to build a `technology center (R and D) in Coimbatore which will be more than IT in real sense."

The L&T CMD also revealed that his company was expanding its ship-building infrastructure and it was looking at the possibility of setting up ship-building unit either in Andhra (Kakinada) or in Gujarat (where it is looking at two or three places). `We'll be taking a decision in the next three or four months', he added.

More Stories on : New Projects | Electrical Goods | Engineering | Tamil Nadu | Larsen & Toubro Ltd

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Arch makes open offer to Merven shareholders

Big worries about Big Four

Manipulating stock options for personal gain

L&T lays foundation stone for campus at Coimbatore

Genius Consultants plans overseas foray

Power exchange: NTPC to work out parameters

CollabNet to partner Sify

Panel pulls up SAIL for poor capacity utilisation