Rane TRW Steering to set up greenfield facility at Trichy for occupant safety

ETAuto reported that Rane Group company Rane TRW Steering Systems (RTSSL) is expanding its manufacturing footprint for occupant safety products in line with the upcoming safety regulations on airbags in all cars by October 2019. A greenfield plant is being set up at Trichy in Tamil Nadu in addition to the existing Chennai facility for these products. This will enable RTSSL to step up its seatbelt capacity from 5.8 million units to 7.5 million units and airbag capacity from 800,000 to 1.5 million units over the next 12 to 18 months.

The company’s current capacity utilisation for occupant safety products including air bags and seat belts is to the tune of 75- 85 percent. As per the government’s legislation for meeting safety criteria, safety components like driver side airbag and crash norms will become mandatory by 2019 and suppliers will find a large market potential for safety products.

Mr Harish Lakshman, Vice Chairman of the Rane Group told ETAuto that “Many OEMs are making dual air bags (passenger and driver air bags) standard fitment across variants of the model. OEMs are getting enhanced capacity confirmations from the suppliers and are qualifying the technologies of the suppliers to be ready for introduction in their vehicles and meet the safety regulation by 2019.”

Source : ETAUTO