The Hindu Business Line : Hinduja arm PL Haulwel Trailers setting up unit near Chennai

Chennai, Feb. 18 The Chennai-based, Rs 60-crore PL Haulwel Trailers (PLHT), part of the Hinduja Group, will soon be setting up a green field facility in Oragadam, about 50 km from Chennai. This is to primarily shift its Chennai unit operating out of a leased site in Ambattur, besides getting into the manufacture of new products.

Speaking to Business Line the President and CEO of the company, Mr S. Ramasubramanian, said the company would be investing Rs 30 crore on creating new facility and machines. The funds would be mobilised either through equity or debt route, he said.

Construction would commence during the second quarter of next fiscal, he said and added that it would manufacture concrete transit-mixer, trailer dry-freighters, refrigerated truck-trailer, curtain slider-trailers (used by retail chains) and trailers for defence applications. Besides, the company would also be producing fuel tankers and composite body panel containers for dry freighters, he said.

The company was also mulling options to make ‘ISO tanktailers’, used to transport dry bulk powder. This would be primarily for exports to Australia, he added.

Plant plans

Last year it acquired the manufacturing facility of Caterpillar in Puducherry for a consideration of Rs 4.5 crore and invested about Rs 3 crore more towards refurbishing the plant and augmenting machines.

This is the fifth plant of PLHT and the company planned to invest another Rs 5 crore to double overall capacity to process over 800 tonnes of steel per month. This would reflect in doubling the turnover of the company to Rs 120 crore in three years, he added.

In addition, the fifth unit would become the base plant for manufacturing products driven by volumes for the company, such as bulk pressure tankers, front/side tipping trailers and also chassis fabrications for in-house consumption and consumption by other units of the company.

PLHT is a division of Automotive Coaches and Components Ltd (ACCL), which is an associate company of Ashok Leyland. While Ashok Leyland holds 92 per cent stake in ACCL, the rest is with TIDCO.

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