BPL’s engineering plastics arm plans expansion

The Bangalore-based engineering plastics and design solutions arm of BPL is to set up plastic parts manufacturing plants in Delhi, Pune and Chennai. The company, which makes plastic injection moulds and moulded components like radiator grills, fan shrouds, radiator tanks, lens and air ducts, caters to nearly all the passenger carmakers in India. “With the demand for the plastic components in automobiles on the rise, we plan to set up manufacturing facilities in these three locations”, says K Sundararaman, vice-president (operations). The company is in talks with a couple of large Tier-1 companies in the ASEAN region. Recently it began exports of plastic components to Indonesia and for the past two years has been exporting tools to a US-based Tier-1 supplier.

Plastics today play a key role in reducing vehicle weight, in turn improving fuel efficiency and power. According to industry experts, the average weight of plastics in a passenger car a decade ago was four kilograms; it now averages around 25kg. The US average is around 60kg and it is expected that by 2015 Indian cars will contain about 50kg of plastics. BPL, which earlier was focusing only on the passenger car industry, has made a foray into manufacture of tools and components for the two-wheeler industry. It is currently developing tools for a leading two-wheeler manufacturer’s new project. It also plans to make bigger size moulds with the help of a 2500-ton press which will enable it to make bigger components for the automotive industry. There are also plans to begin manufacture of multi-coloured moulded components.

BPL's design and engineering service centre which is engaged in industrial design, tool and product design, prototyping and CNC machining caters only to in-house operations but will soon open its doors to other projects. The facility is equipped with a variety of software including MoldFlow Analysis to simulate flow pattern for mould-making and banks on Autocad, UG Nxz, Vericut and Cimatron for design and programming.

BPL received the ‘Excellence in Performance’ award from Mico and ‘Zero ppm Award’ from Toyota Kirloskar Motor twice. Its existing manufacturing capacity is 100 tools and 2400 tons of plastic components per year with an average utilisation of 85 percent. Expansion plans include augmenting capacity with a Rs 16 crore investment spread over three years. Of this, Rs 3 crore will be spent this fiscal to induct three-axis CNC machining centre and spark erosion machines. Tool manufacturing time will be reduced from 12 weeks to less than 10 weeks since machining time will be halved. Furthermore, says Sundararaman, this will enhance accuracy significantly. By 2009-10, the company's tool manufacturing capacity is slated to grow three-fold.