Tata Motors, India’s largest automaker is planning to deliver up to 60,000 units of the Nano, which is well-known as the world's cheapest car, by July next year. While the remaining committed to handing over the first one lakh cars by 2010 once its mother plant in Sanand goes on stream.

In the company's Annual Report for 2008-09 Ratan Tata, Chairman Tata Motors said that 95 per cent construction work at the Singur plant was completed before the project was "thwarted" by Trinamool Congress last year, forcing the company to relocate it to Gujarat.

The new pant in Sanand is likely to be ready by the end of this financial year, says he. It would have an initial production capacity of 2.5 lakh units per annum.

In the report, Tata told the shareholders, “In the meantime, the Nano is being produced in other plant facilities so as to enable around 50,000-60,000 cars to be available to customers over the next 12 months until the main new facility in Gujarat comes on line”.

Currently, Tata Motors is manufacturing the car at its Pantnagar facility having an annual capacity of 50,000 units.

“Once the upcoming Sanand facility comes on line after completion of the last quarter of this financial year, it will supplement Pantnagar, completing the first 1,00,000 deliveries in October-December 2010,” informed the Tata Motors spokesperson.

Tata referred to the violent agitation in Singur led by Trinamool Congress Chief Mamata Banerjee on land acquisition issues and said relocation of the Nano facility to another state was the only option left.

He said that the company's plans of spearheading industrial investment in West Bengal by locating the manufacturing plant for the Nano in the state was thwarted by a local political party, citing injustice done to the residents of the area by the state government in the acquisition of land for the project.

Tata praising the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for "an impressive display of leadership and pragmatism” said all necessary approvals were received within just three days.

He added, “The equipment from the plant in West Bengal, which was 95 per cent complete, was dismantled and is being transported to Gujarat”.

Tata Nano project was conceived in 2003 and the project has cost over Rs 2,000 crore to the company. The current Fiscal year March 23 Nano was launched and was delivered last month to the first customer.

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Posted by Naresh Koshti on 3 August, 2009 2:01:29 PM IST #