Tube Investments to be sole doorframe supplier for Tata Nano

Chennai: The Rs1636-crore revenue engineering and cycles major Tube Investments of India Limited will be the sole car doorframe vendor for Tata Motor Limited's small wonder Nano car.

Part of the Chennai-based Murugappa group, Tube Investments is investing Rs25 crore for setting up a dedicated plant to meet the Nano's requirements at Singur in West Bengal, in close proximity to the Tata Motor's Nano plant. The company hopes to recover the investment in four years.

Meanwhile, the company's Rs35-crore Indica doorframe plant at Pune is expected to go on stream this September.

The two new facilities will take the total number of plants to six for the TI Metal Forming division that looks after this business, with the other plants operating from Chennai, Bawal in Haryana and Halol in Gujarat.

The two Chennai plants supply to Hyundai Motor India Limited, Visteon India, Ford India, Ashok Leyland, Indian Railways while the plants at Bawal and Halol supply to Maruti Suzuki and General Motors India respectively.

TI Metal Forming, formerly known as the Rolled Form Division got into car door panel business in 90s when Hyundai Motor set up its plant at Irrungattukottai near Chennai.

In FY07 metal formed products contributed Rs324.87 crore of its Rs1,636-crore turnover and in the nine months from April to December in Fy 2008, it had earned Rs.263.42 crore.

Meanwhile the company's TI Diamond Chain division-industrial and automotive chains division- is also expanding and is setting up a new plant, the third in the division, at Uttaranchal at an investment of Rs40 crore to cater to the needs of Hero Motors and others. The other two plants in the division are located in Chennai and Hyderabad.