West Bengal’s loss is Gujarat’s gain. It was announced yesterday that the Tata Nano project for the Nano ultra-cheap car would move to Sanand, Gujarat. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has rolled out the red carpet for the people’s car.
Ratan Tata
Ratan Tata
Ratan Tata chose Sanand, 30 kms away from Ahmedabad, for the Tata Nano project after examining possible locations in Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The overall clicmate in Gujarat has been extremely favorable to industry. That, and the fact that the general populace of the state is in favor of industrialisation were important factors in enabling Narendra Modi to allocate 1100 kilometers for the Nano project.
The Tata Nano project location in Sanand boasts of close connectivity to National Highway-8 connecting Rajkot and Ahmedabad. The Nano site is also close to the proposed Dholera port, which is being set up as an industrial development project as part of the implementation of Delhi-Mumbai freight corridor. This could mean that if the Tatas need to export the Nano, they wouldn’t have to go far.
Equally exciting for the Tatas is the reception the company has got from farmers who said they were ready to give their land for construction of approach roads to the site. The land made available to Tata Motors is from the Anand Agricultural University.
The Sanand plant will also have the convenience of being close to Rajkot where a slew of Nano components would be made at different ancillary units. Unlike the situation in Singur, local people and the political leadership expects all that is good to come to their doorstep as the chance of a boom in economy is more that they ever thought as the Nano gets ready for the roll out.
The Nano project in Sanand will have the manufacturing capability of 250,000 cars in a year initially.
Ratan Tata expressed his happiness at things moving so quickly after the disappointment of Singur, West Bengal where the protesting farmers affiliated to the opposition Trinamool Congress party successfully froze the project. The benefits offered by the Gujarat government to Tata Motors are slightly better that what the West Bengal government offered to Tata Motors, he added.
It may take Tata Motors a bit of time to set up the plant in Sanand, and commence actual manufacturing. Meanwhile, Ratan Tata said the company would try to meet the production deadline for the Nano small car - it is believed that the intiial Nanos would be produced at the Pantnagar plant of Tata Motors, and production would shift to the Sannd plant only after the plant is set up and the ancillaries manufacturers have succesfully moved in and started operations too.
Initially, Sanand would see production of the petrol Tata Nano cars, and later more variants, such as diesel, electric and CNG versions of the Nano would be produced here.
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