The country?s little car may have been officially launched into the market on Monday, but the people of Sanand, a sleepy suburb of Ahmedabad, which has been the chosen site for the mother plant of the Nano, will still have to wait a while before it can witness its roll out from the plant premises.
According to locals, there?s been frenetic activity to and from the site over the past few days. ?Machines and equipment is coming in,? reveals a villager. Adhering to their schedule of rolling out the Nano by the end of 2010, executives of Tata Motors have been working round the clock ever since the inking of an MoU between Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and Tata group relocating the Nano project from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand.
Highly placed sources close to the project disclosed that the construction of ancillary plant buildings are in progress, and are expected to be completed within the next couple of weeks. A drive down the road where the plant is coming up bears testimony to this as beyond the barbed wire fencing, several sheds have come up made of pre-engineered steel structutres. Phenix Varco Pruden, pre-engineered steel structure building manufacturer, has bagged the Rs 50 crore ($9.66 million) contract for constructing the ancillary plant buildings.
As much as 4,000 tonne of steel components, designed with a heavy load bearing capacity with a mainframe structure to support the full load are expected to be used for construction of these buildings. Construction of the power train facility, press shop, and assembly line is in progress. If all goes as per schedule, critical infrastructure is expected to be in place by November this year. Sources said Tata Motors is using multiple vendors to expedite the progress of the project. Among the tasks which have already been completed are fencing, construction of inner roads, compound walls and pre-fabricated sheds. Work on the main building has also commenced. The work of laying underground cables for broadband connectivity is also in progress near the site. The state government has also initiated survey of widening of roads leading to the site from Sanand-Viramgam Highway.
Tata Motors has roped in its leading private shareholder, Shapoorji Pallonji & Com (SPCL) for construction of the Nano plant on 1,100 acres of land, which once belonged to Anand Agiculture University.