The $1.3-billion Hirotec Group will establish a car door manufacturing plant in India if it strikes a deal for a huge volume of orders preferably from a single car manufacturer, according to Mr Brian G. McGinnity, Chief Financial Officer, Hirotec America Inc, USA.
Hirotec is a global player in automotive car doors, exhaust systems and hemming equipment and stamping dies for the automotive industry.
He said the company is investing about Rs 20 crore to meet the door manufacturing equipment needs of their OEM clients in India near Coimbatore, which would become fully operational during the course of the year. It offers tooling solutions to M&M, Maruti Suzuki, Renault Nissan, Volkswagen India and Tata Motors.
Automotive tooling
Speaking to newsmen in Coimbatore, he said he expected the Coimbatore facility to provide turnkey solutions for automotive tooling to be fully operational by the third quarter of this year.
The company has around 115 engineers in its engineering centre specialising in hemming technology and assembly tooling (welding fixtures) and plans to add 35 more engineers by the end of this year.
Asked whether the company has any specific time frame for taking its investment decision on door manufacturing plant , he said the plant would require an investment of about $ 40-60 million.
Globally, manufacturers were open to the idea of outsourcing vehicle doors, but this was not the norm here.
The crucial issue was getting a large volume of orders in the region of 2-3 lakh doors a year, preferably from a single manufacturer.