Greaves Cotton to spend Rs 110 cr on capex

Chennai, June 2 Diversified engineering company Greaves Cotton Ltd plans a capital expenditure of about Rs 110 crore this year of which majority will be on its electric two wheeler plant at Ranipet in Tamil Nadu, said a top official.

He also said the electric two wheeler plant is expected to roll out its product by the end of this year.

"We plan to invest about Rs 110 crore towards capital expenditure this year. About Rs.70 crore will be for the electric two wheeler plant at Ranipet to be commissioned by the end of this year," Nagesh A. Basavanalli, Managing Director and Group CEO told .

The Rs 1,500 crore turnover group will be funding the capex out of its internal accruals, he added.

Greaves Cotton has signed an MoU with the Tamil Nadu government to invest about Rs.700 crore over the period of 10 years to set up a plant with an annual capacity of one million units.

Initially the production capacity will be about one lakh units per annum and it will be increased to one million units over a period of time and discussions are on for development of vendor base for various components, Basavanalli added.

Greaves Cotton got into the electric vehicles segment by acquiring the Coimbatore based Ampere Vehicles.

The Ampere Vehicles last year bought 74 per cent stake in the Noida based electric rickshaw maker Bestway Agencies rolling out Ele brand vehicles.

The balance 26 per cent in Bestway will be acquired in 2022.

Basavanalli said the group has no immediate plans of consolidating the electric vehicle's production at Ranipet.

"The E-Rickshaw market is in North and East and we are looking at other products that could be made at Ranipet," he said.

Last year the group sold 27,310 electric vehicles