Oracle Auto, which supplies sheet metal items to Tata Motors, has set up a state-of-the-art CNC spin forming plant despite the current downturn in automobile sector.

According to Oracle Auto managing director Bikash Mukherjee, the sophisticated unit, scheduled to be inaugurated here on January 31, would turn out ‘pulleys’ needed in all water-cooled automobile engines.

Demand for pulleys in the country today is met by imports as well as by indigenous production. But, there are hardly any precision machines to produce pulleys of international standard. The one installed by Oracle Auto, imported from metal forming world leader Leifeld at a cost of Rs 5 crore, is expected to meet the need of the hour.

“We are targeting to supply the pulleys not only to Tata Motors and Tata Cummins but to units all over the world as there is demand for the product,”said Mukherjee. The company is already in touch with auto companies around the world for export orders. This would be both cost-effective as well as meet the highest precision standards, he added.

“Our target is to produce at least 30,000 to 40,000 pulleys a month,” said the Oracle Auto managing director, who also heads another auto parts manufacturing unit, Auto Profiles Ltd, here with which Oracle Auto is soon to merge.

Mukherjee said though the last one year has been a trying one for the company, Oracle had nevertheless invested around Rs 18 crore during the period and today it is the biggest CNC machining centre in the east. In the recent past, Oracle has invested in five big tool-room “presses”, a CNC wire cutting machine, a vertical machine, a CNC spin forming and auxiliary machinery.

Asked why the downturn was chosen for making such an investment, Mukherjee said while the idea primarily was to be fully prepared for the boom ahead which ought to follow a slump, it also worked out cheaper in bad times than when the industry was doing well.

Oracle Auto and Auto Profiles, which combinedly had a turnover of around Rs 104 crore in 2007-08, is expecting a turnover between Rs 65 to Rs 70.

Auto Profiles is currently going slow on a new ‘assembly and paint shop’ unit which it has planned to put up in Lucknow at an investment of Rs 9 crore. Land for the project has already been acquired by it.