HM to invest Rs 415 cr in expansion

Narayanan said investments would be made in its three plants. “We are spending Rs 300 cr in the Chennai plant, Rs 40 crore in the Pitampur plant and Rs 75 crore in Calcutta,” he said.

The company is taking a Rs 300 crore loan from domestic financial institutions, Rs 120 crore from internal accruals and another Rs 50 crore by expansion of its equity.

The company has made plans to increase its turnover from the construction equipmentdivision to Rs 500 crore in the next 2-3 years. “While the automobile market is in a recession, we expect the turnover from our construction equipment division to fare well and make up for the decline in auto sales. In the current fiscal, HM expects its turnover to go up by Rs 350 crore from the equipment division,” Narayanan said.

Meanwhile, Hindustan Motors today rolled out the HM RTV, its unique rural transport vehicle, from the new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Pithampur, in Madhya Pradesh. The HM RTV, a multi-purpose, all terrain heavy duty vehicle, designed and customised to the driving conditions in rural India will revolutionise transportation across the countryside. The HM RTV is being manufactured in technical collaboration with Oka Motor Company of Australia, which has also been involved in the design and development of the vehicle from its very inception.

The new plant, which has been set up at a cost of Rs 44 crore and will manufacture 7000 HM RTVs per annum was inaugurated byDigvijay Singh, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, in the presence of C K Birla, chairman, Hindustan Motors. C K Birla said the HM RTV product concept has evolved after extensive market research in rural India. “I am proved to say that the HM RTV is the first purpose made vehicle desinged specifically for the Indian customer’s needs and will change the face of transportation across the five lakh Indian villages which were hitherto difficult to access,” he said.