Telangana Secures 1st Big Ticket Investment From TATAs

The country’s youngest state, Telangana, secured its maiden industrial investment on Monday from a Tata group company that will manufacture the fuselage and wings of Dornier 228 aircraft produced by Switzerland-based RUAG Aviation AG.

Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL), the aerospace and defence subsidiary of the $96.79 billion Tata group, will set up a manufacturing facility at the aerospace and precision engineering special economic zone (SEZ) in Adibatla on Hyderabad’s outskirts that already houses three other aerostructure units of TASL.

“I assure the Tata group and all other investors that Telangana state will offer the best business regulatory environment as well as a competitive incentive package for future investments in my state,” Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao said at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the project.

Telangana became the country’s 29th state on 2 June after it was carved out from the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh state. Rao, who is the leader of the pro-statehood regional party, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), won the mandate to lead the state of 35.19 million people in the 2014 assembly election.

S. Ramadorai, chairman of TASL, said the company expected its partnership with RUAG Aviation to manufacture fuselages and wings to be the first step towards building a complete Dornier 228 aircraft indigenously.

“Our vision is to work with RUAG in having a full aircraft, equipped with systems flying out from a Tata final assembly. This will be of significant importance to the Indian armed forces in their desire to produce products locally,” Ramadorai said.

State-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd also manufactures the fuselage, wings and tail unit of the light transport aircraft, which can carry two crew members and 15-19 passengers, at its production facility in Kanpur. The plane is finally assembled by RUAG at its Oberpfaffenhofen facility near Munich, Germany.

RUAG relaunched the Dornier 228 in 2010 after upgrading its engine, cockpit and onboard electronic systems, and fitting it with a five-blade propeller made of composite material. “We found a strong partner in Tata for the backbone of the plane—fuselage and wing,” Martin Bühlmann, vice-president of supply chain management at RUAG, said. Bühlmann said in a statement that his company found the “right partner for the future of the RUAG Dornier 228 programme.”

“It is our belief that this project is (a) significant step forward in India’s growth as a high technology, precision, manufacturing destination… It will reinforce Hyderabad’s position on the global aerospace map,” Ramadorai added.

Chief minister Rao pitched the new state as an ideal destination for aerospace companies to set up base in India. Describing the aerospace SEZ as one of its kind in India and likening it to Seattle in the US and Nagoya in Japan, Rao said the presence of research and development facilities of the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Bharat Dynamics Ltd and Mishra Dhatu Nigam Ltd. (Midhani) in the vicinity of the SEZ gives Hyderabad a unique advantage. “The SEZ is set to become a global hub along with many such specialized clusters planned as part of the information technology investment region,” Rao said. The SEZ, spread over 250 acres, was established in 2009.

Source: LiveMint

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