Maruti Suzuki to invest Rs 1,925 cr on third plant

New Delhi: To capitalise on the rapid growth of the Indian auto industry, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) announced on Tuesday an investment of ¥35 billion, or Rs 1,925 crore for setting up its third plant at Manesar. This new production line – Maruti's sixth overall would have 2.5 lakh units annual capacity.

With the new plant, the car market leader hopes to increase its total capacity 46 per cent to 17.5 lakh units a year. Facing a major capacity constraint and huge demand for its products, MSIL currently manufactures 12 lakh units a year. However, the installed combined annual capacity across the existing Gurgaon and Manesar facilities is around 10 lakh units.

Addressing a shareholders' meeting, Mr Osamu Suzuki, Chairman and CEO, Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC), said that the company had earlier not correctly estimated the current pace of growth of the Indian car industry. Japan-based SMC owns a 54.2 per cent stake in MSIL.

Mr R.C. Bhargava, Chairman, MSIL, told Business Line, “Now that the in-principle approval has been given by Mr Suzuki, the investment will have to be approved by the board at its meeting in October. Some work will already start now though.”

Manesar Expansion

He added that the Rs 1,700-crore ongoing expansion project for a second line at the existing Manesar plant will be accelerated by about six months. It was earlier expected to be operational only by April 2012. This expansion project will be completed before the new third plant opens at Manesar and will provide Maruti a similar annual capacity of 2.5 lakh units.

“We are trying to start the assembly line in the expansion of Manesar by September 2011. Since there is so much demand, we are trying to advance it as much as we can,” he said.

As part of its plan to increase production capacity, Maruti is also upgrading and modernising its Gurgaon facility. This is expected to help by adding further capacity and in meeting the 17.5 lakh production target of the next few years. No investment for this was, however, announced.

“Out of the three plants (production lines) at Gurgaon, the machinery at the first and the oldest plant is being scrapped and modernised,” said a company official.

The Indian auto market – Asia's third largest and the second fastest growing globally – accounted for sales of 15.26 lakh units of passenger cars in 2009-10, marking a growth of 25 per cent.

Of the total, Maruti's share was around 50 per cent with sales of 7.65 lakh units. Industry body SIAM predicts annual car demand to grow to 30 lakh units by 2015.

Maruti Suzuki's Rs 5 shares closed nearly one per cent up on the NSE on Tuesday at Rs 1,314.90.

RPG firm buys 10% in Aussie coal company

Mumbai: The RPG Group-promoted Integrated Coal Mining Ltd, an affiliate company of power producer CESC Ltd, has acquired 10 per cent stake in Resource Generation (RG), an Australian coal mining company, for $10.5 million (Rs 45 crore).

Integrated Coal Mining will purchase a million tonnes of thermal coal per annum for three years and two million tonnes per annum for a further 17 years from RG’s Boikarabelo mine in South Africa. RG has agreed, it said in a statement, to place 18,268,053 shares with Integrated Coal Mining at a share price of $0.575.

RG is a public company dual-listed on the Australian and Johannesburg stock exchanges, with coal mining assets in Tasmania in Australia and in South Africa. It also has uranium exploration projects in central-west Africa’s Cameroon.

CESC is India’s third largest power utility, with an installed generating capacity of 1,225 Mw. It serves nearly 2.5 million consumers across Kolkata and Howrah. It is increasing this generating capacity to 5,745 Mw. Its officials could not be spoen to for their views.

The coal purchases will begin when the Boikarabelo mine commences production, scheduled for early 2013. The price will be agreed annually, based on the international benchmark price at the time. The mine is in the Waterberg region of South Africa, one of the country’s largest remaining coal deposits It is estimated to have 603 million tonnes of reserves, about 40 per cent of South Africa’s untapped coal mines, according to RG.

Tata Steel picks up 80% in Canadian ore project for $279 m

Mumbai: Tata Steel has exercised its rights to acquire 80 per cent interest in the Direct Shipping Ore project of New Millennium Capital Corp, Canada (NML).

Tata Steel is the largest shareholder with 27.4 per cent in New Millennium. It has now exercised its exclusive option to participate in the DSO project and has a commitment to take the resulting production.

According to the joint venture agreement, Tata Steel will reimburse 80 per cent of NML's cost to date on the DSO project and arrange funding up to CDN $300 million (about $279 million) of capital costs for the project to earn its 80 per cent share of the venture.

Tata Steel will also get to buy 100 per cent of the DSO project's iron ore products of specified quality, at world market prices, for the life of the mining operation. It is expected that the venture will produce four million dry tonnes per year of iron ore products commencing in 2012.

Mr H.M. Nerurkar, Managing Director, Tata Steel, said, "We are hopeful that along with our partner, we would be able to move forward on various aspects of the project and commission the project in 2012, while we continue to analyse opportunities to increase the percentage of raw material security."

The DSO project contains 64.1 million tonnes of proven and probable mineral reserves at an average grade of 58.8 per cent Fe.

"Now that we have set a course for DSO production, we can look forward to working with Tata Steel on the much larger Taconite project," said Mr Robert Martin, President and CEO, NML.

GSM operators add 13.5 million users in Aug

New Delhi: GSM operators added a whopping 13.5 million mobile subscribers in August taking the total tally to 481 million. The growth was led by Vodafone Essar which added 2.3 million new subscribers followed by State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd with 2.29 million new users. Uninor, which is among the new players to get licences in 2008, managed to get 2.2 million new subscribers in August beating even market leader, Bharti Airtel.

“These numbers come from only the 13 circles where Uninor is commercially present today. While it is early days yet, we believe our strategy is taking us in the right direction.,” said Uninor.

Bharti Airtel added a little over two million users to take its total user base to 141.25 million. Vodafone is at second place with a subscriber base of 113.77 million at the end of August. IDEA cellular continues to be the third largest GSM mobile operator with a subscriber base of 72.7 million and State-owned BSNL is in fourth position in terms of GSM mobile user base with total subscribers of about 70.4 million.

Organised sector adds 3.2 lakh new jobs in July-Sept: Survey

Boom time

There is optimism in the economic scenario across all sectors.

In the services sector, healthcare and hospitality are seen to add the maximum number of jobs, the survey says.

Chennai: It is boom time in new hiring in the organised sector with the addition of nearly 3.2 lakh jobs during July to September and the services sector leading the way.

In the first six months of the calendar year the organised sector added 4.18 lakh jobs, according to a survey by Ma Foi Randstad Employment Trends.

There is optimism in the economic scenario across all sectors. In the services sector, healthcare and hospitality are seen to add the maximum number of jobs, the survey says.

The survey was conducted among 650 companies across 13 industry segments in eight Indian cities.

The top management and senior HR personnel at these companies were queried on their hiring intentions in the present quarter as compared with the previous quarter and their views for the whole year.

The survey shows 4,18,564 jobs were created between January and June 2010 with 1.21 lakh jobs in healthcare and 63,000 jobs in hospitality. The top five sectors leading the boom are healthcare, hospitality, real estate and construction, IT and ITeS, and education, training and consulting.

New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai are the leading job generators — 112,987 jobs during January to September 2010. Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad follow closely with 30,000-plus jobs during the same period, says the survey that tracks Indian employment trends and opportunities.

Mr Ben Noteboom, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Randstad Holding, said, “We see positive trends across many economies such as US, Germany, France, Asia Pacific and parts of Europe which are clearly growing. I expect India to continue its economic growth and employment generation fuelled by its domestic consumption and stabilising global economy.”

Key findings

The real estate and construction sector leads the pack with the highest growth in the number of people employed; not surprisingly, this sector expects growth in average salary by about 4 per cent, followed by pharmaceutical (3.5 per cent) and healthcare (3.4 per cent) during the third quarter.

Amongst cities, Bengaluru expects increase in average salary by about 4.9 per cent followed by Delhi (3.5 per cent) and Pune (3.5 per cent) during the third quarter.

Estimated proportion of experienced workforce is the highest in the pharmaceutical sector at 87 per cent. The healthcare sector is estimated to have the highest percentage of freshers at 38 per cent.

Kolkata has the highest estimated percentage of experienced workforce (82 per cent) and New Delhi has the highest estimated percentage of freshers (35 per cent).

India becomes the seventh largest vehicle producing country globally

New Delhi: The government has claimed that the country has become the seventh largest vehicle producing nation in the world, six years ahead of the set target.

According to Mr B S Meena, Secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industry, "When we were making the Auto Mission Plan (AMP) in 2006, we had projected India to become the seventh largest vehicle producing country in the world by 2016. We have already achieved this milestone good six years ahead of the set target."

Meena added during April-August 2009-10, the cumulative production of vehicles grew at 32.4 per cent over the year ago period. "The passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles and two-wheeler segments have all recorded impressive growth rates of 32 per cent, 49 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively, during this period," said Meena.

He further added that Indian passenger vehicle market is estimated to grow to 9 million units by 2020, while the two-wheeler market is likely to reach 30 million units. "The realisation of these volumes would position India as one of the top five vehicle producing countries in the world by 2020 with the domestic consumption growing by 4-folds to USD 120 billion," Meena said.

Furthermore, according to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the country vehicle production has increased to 14.1 million units in 2009-10, a jump of over 25 per cent from 11.2 million units in the previous fiscal.

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Delhi metro has carried over 1.25 bn commuters

NEW DELHI: Since it began its operation in 2002, the Delhi Metro has so far carried more than 1.25 billion commuters in the national capital, which is more than the country's total population.

Till yesterday, the Delhi Metro, whose network now expands across the National Capital Region, carried over 1.27 billion people.

"It is a unique achievement for any urban mass transport system," a DMRC spokesman said.

As per the 'Census of India and Preparation of the National Population Register' report, India's projected population in 2011 will be about 1.20 billion.

Currently, in Delhi Metro, over a hundred trains are making more than 2,000 trips a day on a 125-kilometre long Metro network carrying over 1.15 million commuters everyday.

After the completion of phase 2, when the Delhi Metro network will extend to almost 190 kilometres, more than two million commuters are expected to travel by the modern transport system everyday.

Railways shortlists 8 bidders for Kanchrapara coach factory

KOLKATA: The Railways has decided to invite financial bids for the proposed Rs 500-crore coach factory in Kanchrapara by November. Eight global majors, including two in consortium with Indian partners, have been shortlisted by the railways for setting up the factory.

“We will invite financial bids from the shortlisted bidders in November,” a railway official said.

The eight shortlisted bidders include leading global players in rail transportation like Bombardier Transportation India, Alstom India, Siemens of Germany and Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) of Spain and Hyundai-Rotem, which is part of Korea’s Hyundai group. Hyundai Rotem has worked in the Delhi Metro.

CAF has been part of top international projects like Heathrow Express and the Hong Kong’s Airport Express. The other bidders include Stadler Rail of Switzerland with Titagarh Wagons, Jindal Rail India with Hitachi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries with Texmaco. The project is close to railway minister Mamata Banejee’s heart.

The project will come up as part of a JV, in which the Railways will hold 26% equity. The majority 74% will be held by the potential JV partner. The Railways had announced plans to manufacture some 500 EMU/MEMU coaches in the factory.

Established in 1863, the Kanchrapara workshop was set up by the then Assam Bengal Railway. It is one of the oldest such facilities in existence under the Indian Railways and had served the defence department in aircraft maintenance and in production of armoured cars and grenade shells during the Second World War.