Hirotec Group, a Japanese company that makes doors and exhaust systems, hemming equipment, stamping dies and assembly tooling for cars, has announced that it will pump in Rs. 20 crore over the next 2 years to set up a manufacturing facility at Arasur in Coimbatore that would provide automotive tooling for car manufacturers (hemming tooling). The new a 10,500 sq. ft. plant is expected to be fully operational by December 2011 and the equipment (for the unit) will be imported from the USA and installed by August this year. The US$ $1.3-billion company would reportedly be offering hemming solutions (that join outer and inner panels of doors) for Maruti's Swift and DZire models. Brian G. McGinnity, Chief Financial Officer Hirotec America Inc said that he expects the Coimbatore facility to generate a turnover of Rs. 27.2 crore during 2011-12 and Rs. 68 crore by 2012-13. Currently, it earns US$3 million from its Indian operations. The Indian arm of the Hiroshima-based company has already invested nearly Rs.10 crore for its design unit (instituted in 2005) in Coimbatore for providing cutting edge engineering and technical services. It will also invest Rs.10 crore at it's plant in Pune, which provides lean body shop tooling, utilizing the latest manufacturing technologies to support the local and global market demand. Even though Hirotec's products cater to the passenger vehicle segment, it is holding discussions with Tata Motors for supplying doors and front panel for LCVs. It is widely believed that the company has also done the complete tooling solutions for Mahindra's global sports utility vehicle (codenamed W201). However, the auto component firm has categorically maintained that it has no near-term plans to make doors for the Indian markets as the volumes are still not reasonable.
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