Tube Investments of India (TII), part of the Murugappa Group, is opening a greenfield plant built at an investment of Rs 250 crore on October 30.

Located at Tiruttani in Tamil Nadu, the plant will manufacture large diameter tubes for hydraulic cylinders for earthmoving and construction equipment, propeller shafts for high-payload vehicles and rear axle tubes for UVs. The new facility will have an installed capacity of 11,000 tonnes per month. The plant is aimed at catering to new segments as well as opportunities in the overseas market.

In India, 30-40 percent of the large diameter tube requirements are imported. The new plant will enable the company to address this demand. Built over 63 acres, the plant has machines imported from Germany, Italy and Japan.

TII makes a wide variety of CDW (Cold Drawn Welded) and ERW (Electric Resistance Welding) tubes with diameters ranging from 60mm to 180mm and thickness from 4mm to 12.7mm.

Talking to Autocar Professional, L Ramkumar, managing director, TII, said the new plant represents the single largest investment for the company in a greenfield facility anywhere in India and has been built with the aim to be globally competitive.

The company will also export the large diameter tubes from this new unit to Europe, the US and ASEAN. As of now, the company is in the process of getting orders from overseas. It hopes to commence exports in 3-4 months’ time. “This plant took us two years to build and with the new plant we are attempting to be a global supplier and targeting exports too,” said K K Paul, president, Tube Products of India, a division of TII.

He added that from the third year onwards, the plant could do business worth Rs 450 crore. At present, trial production is on and actual output will start in a two months’ time. Tube Investments has three manufacturing plants located at Avadi, on the outskirts of Chennai, Shirwal near Pune in Maharashtra and one at Mohali, Punjab with a total capacity of 200,000 tonnes per annum.