Atlas Copco's Nashik plant by September

Pune-based construction and mining tools company Atlas Copco India Limited's road construction equipment manufacturing (RCE) facility at Nashik is expected to start production by September 2008.

Work on the 3,500-sft RCE plant, being set up adjacent to the company's existing facility at the Satpur area of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), is in full swing. The company is investing around Rs 17 crore in the plant, company sources said.

The RCE facility at Nashik will manufacture compactors and pavers, and the company expects to roll out the first compactor from this facility by September 2008.

A compactor is a machine or mechanism used to reduce the size of waste material or soil through compaction.

The existing Nashik facility of Atlas Copco manufactures construction and mining equipment. The facility includes three production units covering products such as surface drilling equipment, rotary blasthole and waterwell drills, down-the-hole hammers and construction tools.

The surface drilling unit of Nashik is the largest facility for manufacturing pneumatic crawlers in the Atlas Copco Group, while the rotary blasthole plant is the company's only such facility outside the US. The construction tools plant is the sourcing hub for handheld pneumatic tools for the group.

The company expanded its Nashik facility at an investment of Rs 28 crore in 2007. It had set up new assembly units for surface drilling rigs and modernised the hand-held construction tools facility.