Rane TRW Steering Systems Pvt. Ltd., a 50:50 joint venture between the Rane Group and ZF TRW, has opened its state-of-the-art airbag manufacturing plant located adjacent to its seatbelt plant at Singaperumal Koil near Chennai. The plant was formally inaugurated on August 24 by Mr. Nigel Harris, Managing Director and President, Ford India.
The new facility coming under the Rane-TRW’s Occupant Safety Division is located in the same campus as the company’s existing one dedicated to seatbelts operational since 1997, with both plants having a total workforce of around 450 employees.
In India, Rane TRW’s Occupant Safety Division manufactures seatbelts and airbags, catering to key customers, including Ford India, Renault Nissan, Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki India, Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland and Daimler India Commercial Vehicles. The company exports nearly 15 per cent of its seat belt volumes to Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam and Thailand, among other countries.
Commenting on the plant inauguration, Mr. Harish Lakshman, Managing Director, Rane TRW, said: “With the Government of India promoting Occupant Safety/Road Safety to significantly reduce fatalities, we expect the Indian auto Industry to introduce passive safety technologies to meet these regulations. The commissioning of this new facility demonstrates our company’s commitment to support technology evolution in the passenger vehicles. We anticipate exponential growth in the application of frontal airbags over the next decade and Rane TRW will be well positioned to support both global OEMs and domestic OEMs in India with their growth aspirations to bring in these technologies to their vehicles.”
The airbag plant, which has been set up at an initial investment of Rs. 18 crores and covering an area of 1,800 sq. metres, will assemble driver and passenger airbag modules. The plant will have an installed capacity to produce around 500,000 airbags initially, which will be doubled in the next two years’ time.
Rane TRW is currently working to localize the airbag components to improve its competitiveness in a highly cost-conscious market like India. “We basically plan to have a lot of local content in our airbags in India, moving forward. Only the inflator, being the most critical part of the airbag, will still be sourced from ZF-TRW outside of India. We have around 30 per cent share in the Indian airbag market and are eyeing a minimum one-third share in future”, said Mr. Alexander Heilig, Director – Product Line, Global Steering Wheel Systems, ZF TRW, while addressing the media.
ZF-TRW manufactures inflators at its facilities in Germany, North America and China and holds nearly 17 per cent share in the airbag market in Asia Pacific.
Apart from occupant safety systems, Rane TRW is also a major player in steering systems which contribute to around 70 per cent of the company’s turnover at present. As a preferred supplier of hydraulic power steering systems to many leading vehicle manufacturers, the company expects the technology to be adopted by an increasing number of vehicle segments in the country in future.
“We expect the recovery in the M&HCV segment to continue and that it will aid the growth of our steerings business. In addition, an increasing number of LCVs and SCVs will slowly start migrating to power steerings, similar to what happened in trucks and cars, and we expect this trend to boost sales for our steering systems”, added Mr. Lakshman.