Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Dec 26, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Dec 26, 2002 |
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Corporate
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Environment Car care centre goes extra mile to woo customers Our Bureau
PUNE, Dec. 25 NO poisonous paint fumes, no greasy puddles and no noise pollution. B.U. Bhandari Auto Ltd, dealers for Tata Engineering's entire range of passenger vehicles, has just launched what it calls an environment-friendly vehicle care centre at Wakad, off Pune city. `Happy Journey', as it is aptly named, the Rs 1.7-crore car care facility is run on the principle of zero pollution and 100 per cent recycling of water with a view to conserving resources in the region which has a chronic water shortage. The facility, which was inaugurated by Tata Engineering's Executive Director, Passenger Car Business unit, Mr V. Sumantran, has a 100 per cent rain water harvesting process to feed the borewells which provide water to the villages nearby. "Each car requires 200 litres of water to be washed and at the rate of washing 50 cars every day, a mammoth 10,000 litres of water is lost every day," says Mr Chandravadan Bhandari, Joint Managing Director, B.U. Bhandari Auto. "At our car care centre we recycle the water and save more than 60 per cent of this for reusing to wash cars. The rest of the water is further recycled and used to water plants at the centre.'' The centre's paint shop is also designed to be environment-friendly with the closed paint shop using filters to trap excess paint that would otherwise disperse in the atmosphere in fumes. On an average four litres of paint and thinner is used for painting a vehicle and an estimated 20 per cent of this is lost during the process in hazardous fumes. Mr Bhandari says the car care centre is also designed to be 100 per cent customer-friendly. Customers can drive in to the centre with their cars and have the option of getting on with their work at the cyber cafes at the centre while waiting for delivery of the cars. Those wanting to head back into the city have the facility of a shuttle service which picks them up at the city and drops them back. "With competition so tough, the only way to business is to give the customer what he wants,'' says Mr Shailesh Bhandari, Executive Director, pointing out that even spares at the centre come with a six-month warranty for vehicles that are 10 years old. The centre is equipped to handle 30 cars simultaneously on a 17,500 sq. ft. work area. B.U. Bhandari Auto have been Tata Engineering dealers since 1998 and also sell and service the company's vehicles through authorised service centres in Sangli, Karad and Ahmednagar. The current car care centre has been completed in a record five months time, according to Mr Chandravadan Bhandari who points out that with space becoming an increasingly scarce commodity and given the unreasonable prices of land within city limits, car care centres will now have to be shifted out of the city limits to sustain themselves.
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