Sino-Indian venture for plastic fuel tank plant in Chennai

Mumbai: Mumbai-based Zoom Developers Pvt Ltd and Yangzhou-based Yapp Automotive Parts Ltd have entered into a 49:51 joint venture to set up a plastic fuel tank manufacturing facility in Chennai.

Yapp is the fuel tank supplier for Volkswagen, Audi, GM and Ford and claims a share of about 50 per cent of the Chinese plastic fuel tanks market.

The $14 million (Rs 56 crore) Chennai project will have the capacity to produce 2,50,000 plastic fuel tanks at a time.

Production will commence in the first quarter of 2009.

“We want to be the pioneer to introduce plastic fuel tanks to the Indian OEMs,” said Mr Sun Yan, President of Yapp Automotive Parts Ltd. “In Europe, 95 per cent of cars have plastic fuel tanks. In US it is 80 per cent and in China it is 70 per cent. ”

Replacing steel


Worldwide, plastic is rapidly replacing steel as a preferred material for passenger car fuel systems but the Indian automotive industry is yet to catch up with the trend, said a joint statement from the companies. Proponents of the plastic fuel tank cite safety, design flexibility and ability to meet emission norms as its advantages.

“Yapp will provide technology while we will take care of logistics and manpower. A five-member board of directors will be constituted with three from Yapp and two from Zoom; a nominee of Yapp will be the CEO of the joint venture, Yapp-Zoom Automotive Systems,” said Mr Brijpal Singh, Vice President of Zoom Developers.

Now importing


“Global car manufacturers Ford, Honda and GM are importing plastic fuel tanks to India while Tata Motors and Mahindra and Mahindra are seriously examining the prospect of adopting plastic fuel systems.

With this initiative, the OEMs get an opportunity to locally source the plastic fuel tanks,” he said.

Yapp Automotive Parts Co, in which the China state agency State Development and Investment Corporation holds 66 per cent equity, is specialising in automotive fuel system development.

Zoom Developers, the Mumbai-based project developers, are already in the automotive component industry through their wholly owned subsidiary Zoom Automotive Ancillaries