A fire broke out at a wiring harness company Yazaki India's factory at Maraimalai Nagar on the outskirts of Chennai on Wednesday evening, in what is part of an unusual series of fire incidents taking place in the automotive clusters.
This is the third fire incident in the month of September in the state of Tamil Nadu, the fourth such incident took place at the paint shop in Fiat India Automobile Private Limited's a joint venture factory with Tata Motors in Ranjangaon on the outskirts of Pune, Maharashtra last week.
Over the last one week, the facilities of Teyang Metal in Oragadam, and Pegatron facility in Chengalpattu - which is an Apple supplier - had caught fire due to short circuits.
Sources say fire broke out in the store area of Yazaki's factory around 8 pm on Wednesday which was not contained for a few hours.
Yazaki is among the top 15 global auto-component companies with global leadership in the wiring harness space with close to 30% market share. Yazaki India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Yazaki Corporation, and has 11 plants and 2 Technical Centers in 8 locations, with close to 12000 employees. Yazaki India produces wiring harnesses and components of wiring harnesses (injection moulding).
The facility in Maraimalai Nagar is understood to be supplying to Royal Enfield, Yamaha Motor, and Toyota Kirloskar. The same is yet to be confirmed by the company.
It is currently expanding its wiring harness presence in the country and is planning to diversify into clusters, electronic products for the Indian market, and also producing wiring harness and services to Global Yazaki requirements.
"After a strong effort to establish a profitable enterprise over the last 4 years, Yazaki India is now on a strong growth path and expects the same to accelerate over the next 3 to 5 years," stated the company's LinkedIn profile.
Along with wiring harnesses, Yazaki also produces power distribution and management electronic products, clusters, and electronic products for hybrid and electric vehicles and has a significant presence in the emerging trends of electrification and autonomous vehicles.