Renault-Nissan Chennai car project takes off

Chennai: Renault and Nissan gets off with the Oragadam car project following the ground breaking ceremony performed by the joint venture entity, Renault Nissan Automotive India Pvt Ltd, yesterday, about 50 kms from here.

The car plant upon commissioning after 2 years from now would annually manufacture0.4-million cars.

The plant, said to be the largest investment in Tamil Nadu, is coming up at an investment of Rs. 45,000-mn. When in operation, it will employ 4,000 people.

The plant will have separate manufacturing lines for the two partners, each of whom intend to produce 200,000 cars a year.

However, the upstream facilities, such as the plant for making engines and gearboxes and stampings, which are capital intensive, will be common for both.

The French car major, Renault, intends to produce a few models based on the Logan platform. Nissan would make cars compact cars (like Maruti Alto and Hyundai Santro), including the next generation of Nissan’s Micra, said Mr Colin Dodge, Senior Vice-President, Nissan Motor Company.

While Renault would sell its cars through its joint venture with Mahindra & Mahindra ( Mahindra Renault India Ltd), Nissan is engaging with Hover Automotive India Private Ltd as its service partner for marketing, sales, after-sales and dealer development.

The TN Government had allotted 640 acres of land for the project and another 160 acres for creating a vendor park is being allocated.

When the project was announced 16 months ago, it was to be a three-way joint venture, of Renault, Nissan and Mahindra and Mahindra. M&M later dropped out, citing preoccupation with its other ventures. This caused some delay in commencement of construction.