The Hindu Business Line : Wheels India to make components for wind turbines

Chennai, Aug. 16 Working towards achieving 15 per cent of its sales from non-automotive sectors, Wheels India Ltd plans to get into manufacture of components for wind turbines. The Rs 1,130-crore TVS group company, which turned 50 last year, has sent in samples to a few customers, including Vestas, for validation, says Mr Srivats Ram, Managing Director.

This is the second step the company is taking in terms of non-automotive reach-out, to de-risk itself from the cyclical-nature of automotive business. The first was to set up a new facility at Wardha, Maharashtra, with an investment of Rs 40 crore, to produce steel structural components for thermal power plants – special components that go into the civil structures for holding boilers.

The plant is expected to be commissioned in the third quarter of the current year, says the annual report of Wheels India for 2008-09.

“In discussion with power plant companies, we learnt that structural components were one of the major supply chain bottlenecks they faced in their expansion plans,” the report says, adding that business from this investment would grow “substantially, over a three-year period”.

In his speech at the annual general meeting here on Friday, the Chairman of the company, Mr S. Ram, said the demand for air suspension systems in the current year will receive a boost from the buses that the various State transport undertakings would purchase with funds provided by the Government of India under the JNNURM scheme.

Meanwhile, Sundaram Hydraulics Ltd, in which Wheels India and Sundaram Finance each have a 49 per cent stake, will commence production by the end of this year. Wheels India has invested Rs 7.35 crore in the company.

The company was recently set up to produce components for hydraulic cylinders, mainly for those that go into construction equipment, industrial and aerospace applications.

Sundaram Hydraulics has so far spent Rs 26 crore out of the Rs 40-crore budget earmarked for the project, Mr Ram said. The project is expected to break even in three years.

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