The new facility has been established at an investment of Rs. 30 crores, with a capacity to produce 180 buses per month. With this new facility Irizar-TVS has expanded its capacity from the present 1,200 to 2,200 buses per annum.
Mr. Seshasayee said on the occasion: “It is our intention to grow Irizar-TVS because of the combined strengths we have between Irizar, AL and TVS to look at as many offerings in the coach and bus segment”.
Irizar-TVS was incorporated in 2001 with manufacturing facilities at Viralimalai and Pudukkottai. The bus body building division has been in operation since 1981 as part of Sundaram Industries with its three plants in Madurai, Pudukottai and Vralimalai. In 2001, Ashok Leyland joined hands with TVS, and in 2003 the tripartite JV agreement by TVS, AL and Irizar. The Vralimalai and Pudukottai plants are now part of the JV.
In the last eight years, the JV was primarily catering to the requirement of Ashok Leyland’s bus business in the domestic and export market and to a few private operators. With an annual capacity of 1,200 buses, the JV could not exploit the full market potential for buses in India. Therefore, the Board took a decision to expand the capacity to cater not only to the requirements of Ashok Leyland but also to many of the private customers who typically buy the chassis from AL and get the body built from external fabricators.
Mr. Dinesh said: “We wish to partner AL not only in India but also in the export markets. We are already supplying fully-built buses and kits to the new plant in Ras-el-kaimah”.
The new facility has a built-up area of 2 lakh sq. ft. with three production lines and seven paint booths. The facility also has a shower test bay that simulates extreme weather condition in which the finished coach is checked for water leak. The various sub-assemblies and bus/coach assembly are carried out under one roof. The plant makes Irizar-TVS on par with some of the best body building facilities in India.
Irizar-TVS has the capacity and the expertise to build the complete range of buses, starting from the top-end luxury coach to the low-floor and semi low-floor city buses. In fact, Ashok Leyland’s top end luxury coach Luxura was developed based on Irizar’s globally successful platform, Inter-century, and this is built at the Irizar-TVS facility. The company currently builds most of Ashok Leyland’s requirement for the Middle East, including sub assemblies and components for the new AL plant at Ras-el-kaimah. Irizar-TVS is also executing part of the JNNURM order for city buses awarded to Ashok Leyland.
The new facility raises the total capacity of the Viralimalai plant to 2,200 coaches. The modern infrastructure for R&D; and Coach building enables the company to bench mark processing time to international standards and enhance production on a continuous basis. Fixturisation would help the company ensure mass production to world class quality. The plant would enable multi-variant products to be manufactured under a single roof.
The modem facilities will enhance the company’s ability to compete in the domestic market and other strongly growing export markets including Asia.
Ashok Leyland is looking at Irizar-TVS as a partner in progress in the bus segment. AL has a target to sell 18,000 to 20,000 buses for the financial year 2010-11 out of which 50 to 60 per cent would be fully built buses. This includes both the domestic and export market. Which means the company is looking at volumes of roughly 10,000 fully built buses for the coming year.
