M&M halves energy use per vehicle

Indian automotive giant Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) now requires just half the energy for manufacturing a vehicle, as it has doubled the energy efficiency of its operations since FY 2009. The company's share of renewable energy increased to 33% in FY24, stated Anish Shah, MD and CEO of the company, in its latest annual report.

Here is how the company has done it.

M&M identified traditional paint shop blowers as major energy hogs. These workhorses were replaced with cutting-edge EC (electronically commutated) motors. The result? A cool 30% reduction in energy consumption compared to the old blowers. These EC champions are already whirring away in Nasik, Chakan, and Rudrapur plants, saving big on the energy bill. Furthermore, the company swapped out a whopping 1,700 conventional air circulators for BLDC (brushless direct current) technology fans,kn own for consuming significantly less energy while maintaining top performance.

Secondly, with water scarcity emerging as a real threat to industries, M&M has just upped its game, maintaining its water positivity status is more than 85%. Their Chakan and Kandivali plants are now equipped with a  containerised reverse osmosis (RO) plant. It takes water from sewage treatment plants (STP) and effluent treatment plants (ETP) and transforms it into, potable-quality fresh water. It gets looped back into the production cycle, used for crucial processes and keeping cooling towers functional.

Furthermore, with regard to adoption of renewable energy, M&M's Maharashtra plants have a 76 MWp (mega watt peak) group captive solar project. Commissioned in April 2022, this project has enough solar muscle to generate a whopping 100 million units of clean energy annually. In last 4-5 years, 18 MWp rooftop solar projects have been implemented in totality across the manufacturing sites of the Company.

Additionally, in the windmill category, the company installed a  6.3 MW windmill in Maharashtra for captive consumption.

Likewise, plastic packaging is a necessary evil for auto parts, but a nightmare for landfills. At M&M, the carton boxes are converted into re-usable packaging material with the help of a shredder. Due to this initiative, plastic packaging has been reduced.