Tata Ryerson plant in Singur

It seems the Tatas are in no mood to budge from Singur. Tata Ryerson, a 50:50 venture between Tata Steel and Ryerson Tull of the US, will set up a processing facility dedicated to Tata Motors' small car project in Singur.

Sandipan Chakravortty, managing director, said the facility would have a capacity of half a million tonne, with construction to be completed within nine months of land being handed over to the company.

The Tata Ryerson plant would be a part of the 997-acre site that Tata Motors had identified for the project. Chakravortty said the plant would require around 10 acres.

At present, the company has a couple of service centres in Jamshedpur and Faridabad and one in Pune. All these cater to domestic automakers. Even though Tata Ryerson is headquartered in Kolkata, Singur's would be its first plant in West Bengal, coming up in 2007-08.

In 2008-09, Telcon, a subsidiary of Tata Motors, will set up an earth moving equipment manufacturing plant at Kharagpur, at a cost of Rs 300 crore.

Chakravortty said the processing facility at Kharagpur would be on the lines of the proposed Chennai facility, meant for heavy vehicles. The two projects in West Bengal were announced by Ratan Tata on the same day in May 2006.

Besides these projects, West Bengal has seen a slew of investments from the Tata group over the past few months. The group has almost doubled its investment in the Haldia coke and power project to Rs 1,650 crore, to be undertaken by Tata Power and Hooghly Met Coke & Power Co, promoted by Tata Steel. Further,

Tata Metaliks will be increasing its investment at Kharagpur and is seeking 350 acres for its diversification project adjacent to the existing plant. Software major TCS has also invested hugely in its Kolkata facilities.

At present, TCS employs 6,500 people in Kolkata and has acquired around 40 acres in Rajarhat for a campus.