The Hindu : Business : Rane Group to set up unit at Singur

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Tuesday, Feb 19, 2008
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Rane Group to set up unit at Singur

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: The Rane Group of Chennai, which is setting up a component unit for Nano cars, may use Singur as its base for feeding the Jamshedpur plant of Tata Motors also, Chairman L. Ganesh, indicated. However, this was for the future, he said.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, after performing a ground-breaking ceremony at the Tata Motors project site at Singur, he said the group companies would supply four components, including steering columns and seat belts for the small car. He said Rs. 20 crore would be invested in this unit which would be operational before July and would employ about 300 people. “We will gear up to serve the 3.5 lakh car capacity projected by Tata Motors for this project and complete our project in phases within a year,” he said. Rane has got five acres at Singur.

Rane (Madras) President, S. Parthasarathy, said Tata Motors was the group’s biggest customer although it supplied to all major original equipment manufacturers like Maruti, Ashok Leyland and the Mahindras. The company also had a sizable export market, mainly in Europe and the U.S.

Pointing out that Rane was one of the first suppliers to finalise the concept (of the small car) as early as December 2005, Mr. Ganesh said development activities for this project commenced soon after.

He said now that the company had marked a presence in the East, it might explore its options on shifting to Singur, some of the components supplies that it now makes to the Tata Motors unit in Jamshedpur from its Chennai and Mysore unit.

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