Hansen Drives to set up gearbox unit in TN

Chennai: Hansen Drives, a subsidiary of Hansen Transmissions International N.V. of Belgium, plans to set up a Rs 1,500-crore manufacturing facility to make gear boxes for wind turbines.

Hansen Drives will set up the facility at Suzlon’s SEZ at Palladam, near Coimbatore.

According to an official press release, the company signed an agreement with the Tamil Nadu Government to invest Rs 1,500 crore over five years. The investment will generate over 1,000 jobs, 800 of them direct jobs.

Hansen Drives is a market leader in manufacturing gear boxes for use in wind turbines. The investment will benefit the Palladam region, an industrially backward area, and catalyse investments in projects in renewable energy. Suzlon, a leading wind turbine manufacturer headquartered in Pune, acquired Hansen Transmissions last year.

When the project was announced last year, Hansen Transmissions officials had said that the facility spread over 2.2 lakh sq m would include a heat treatment plan, machining, casting, assembling and quality assurance and testing facilities. It would have a capacity to make over 1,500-2,000 gear boxes and cater to wind turbine manufacturers in India and abroad.