In a bid to augment its capacity to meet the demand, Voltas, a Tata group company, has started work on its new Rs 500- crore room AC manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu.
The upcoming factory, at Madharapakkam in Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu, is spread over 150 acres and the company has planned to invest over Rs 500 crore for room AC manufacturing, over the next couple of years.
The bhoomi pujan for the project was performed by the leadership team of the company, including chairman of Voltas, Noel Tata and MD & CEO Pradeep Bakshi.
This facility will ensure that all products are competitive on a global scale and is an extension to the existing facility in Pantnagar.
Pradeep Bakshi, MD & CEO, Voltas, said, “This new facility will play a significant role in augmenting our capacity in catering to the growing consumer demand across India and will help expand our presence especially in South India.”
The facility, the fifth manufacturing facility for Voltas, after Pantnagar, Waghodia and Sanand, will be fully operational within this fiscal.
Besides, the facility will benefit the local communities in and around its vicinity, as is expected to create employment for close to 1,500 workers, said a statement by the company.
In Q4FY23, Voltas’ product business has performed relatively better with growth across all product categories amid incessant rains and muted consumer sentiments towards the discretionary spend. The company’s consolidated total income for the quarter was at Rs 3,003 crore as against Rs 2,704 crore in the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, marking a growth of 11% year-on-year while PAT stood at Rs 143 crore.
The company’s management recently told an earnings call that its upcoming capex would be in the range of Rs 350 crore to Rs 500 crore, as the company largely now concentrating more on the capacity expansion and backward integration. With the capex, the company plans to almost the double the AC capacity to two million, whereas the commercial refrigerator will be scaled up to 5 lakh from 2.5 lakh.
