The Jamshedpur plant will have an initial capacity of 1 million wheels which will be upgraded to 2 million wheels by mid-2011. SSWL’s main customers in the truck segment will be Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland and will also look at opportunities in export markets in Japan and Europe. With this expansion the company expects to be the number one automobile wheel manufacturer in India by early next year.
SSWL manufactures automotive steel wheels since 1991. The company’s product range comprises of wheels for passenger cars, multi-utility vehicles, tractors, trucks, OTR vehicles as well as two and three-wheelers.
SSWL currently has two production facilities in Dappar (near Chandigarh) and Oragadam (near Chennai) with a total capacity of 10 million wheels p.a. The third is the new facility at Jamshedpur.
SSWl believes that it is a strong and reliable partner to the Indian and international automotive industry and increasingly being recognized as a reputed global player in the development and production of steel wheels for OEMs.
Some of the major customers in the passenger car MUV and two- and three-wheeler segments are Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, Honda Siel Cars, Mahindra & Mahindra, Nissan, Volkswagen, General Motors, Honda Scooters and Piaggio. In the tractor segment the company is supplying to Mahindra & Mahindra Tractors, Punjab Tractors, International Tractors, Eicher Tractors, Escorts, New Holland and John Deere. In the truck segment, the company supplies to Swaraj Mazda, Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland and in the OTR segment SSWL supplies to JCB and L&T; Case.
In the export market SSWL supplies to PSA Peugeot Citroen (France) and Renault (Romania and Brazil), Siam Kubota (Thailand and Japan), Kromag (Austria) and Just (Germany). The company has developed relationship with Renault and has started supplies of a newly developed Styled Steel Wheel to Renault Romania. SSWL has also been selected as a single source supplier to Renault’s greenfield plant in Morocco. The company has also been nominated as a supplier to BMW for the mini model.
More recently SSWL has bagged order from ETOP, one of the largest distributors of wheel & tyre assemblies in Eastern Europe for placed a repeat order for 7,000 wheels to be dispatched in August 2010. This follows initial orders executed by SSWL in recent past.
SSWL is confident of generating business to a level of 50,000-70,000 wheels (approx.) per year from ETOP. The business would translate to export earnings of approx. Euro 7,00,000 per year.
