Tudor to expand Ahmedabad facility

Ahmedabad: Battery manufacturer, Tudor India Limited (TIL), is chalking out an expansion plan to keep pace with the growing demand.

The company is expanding its automotive and inverter battery manufacturing capacity at its Ahmedabad unit from 6 lakh batteries to 1 million batteries a year at a cost of Rs 35 crore.

Known for its Prestolite brand of lead-acid batteries for automotive and inverter applications, TIL is the Indian arm of UK-based Chloride Motive Power Batteries, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Alpharetta-Georgia, a US-based stored electrical-energy solutions provider.

“We expect that the planned capacity increase will allow TIL to further increase its share and brand image in the rapidly developing Asia Pacific battery market,” Luke Lu, president (Asia Pacific), Alpharetta-Georgia, stated in a company release.

“The expansion is part of the company’s overall strategy that focuses on taking advantage of profitable growth opportunities, both in manufacturing and global sourcing, particularly in India and China,” he added.

Present in the automotive segment of cars, tractors, light commercial vehicles (LCVs) and heavy commercial vehicles (HCVs), TIL is hoping to cater to 10 per cent of the 10-million after-market battery demand in India and 50 per cent of the 2 million battery demand by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), said a company official, adding that the demand for automotive batteries was growing at a rate of 8-10 per cent a year.

TIL increased its capacity during 2006-2007, following which the company registered a 44 percent increase in net sales to Rs 58.10 crore for the period ended September 30, 2007.

The present capacity expansion, which is expected to be completed by June 2008, will allow production of innovative products in wet form for OEMs and after-market customers in the region, the release stated.

TIL was the first company to introduce maintenance-free lead-acid batteries designed with polyethylene separators, cold forged terminals and bone dry charged batteries in India.