Mahindra to set up India’s first vehicle scrapping unit

Over the last month, there has been a lot of talk of car scrapping due to NGTs new initiative to scrap those diesel cars that are older than 10 years and those petrol ones that are older than 15 years. That led to the question as to how to dispose these vehicles. European countries have a proper schemes where in the person who gets his car scrapped gets incentives and discounts while buying a new car. Currently, there is no such thing in India as of now. But that may just change soon.

How?

Mahindra Intertrade Ltd, a part of the Mahindra Group announced that it has partnered with MSTC (a government company) to set up India’s first greenfield auto-shredding and recycling plant. The company hopes to setup various plants under this JV, the first of which will come up either in Gujarat or Maharashtra. The plants will be fully automated. Work will start on the first plant from October this year and it is expected to be running in full production by 2018.

Currently our scrap requirement is of 5-6 million tonnes, which is met by imports. However once this plant starts functioning, it will help reduce that by a considerable amount. The current scrap industry is estimated to be in the range of $1.8 billion (12,000 Crores).

Sumit Issar, who is the MD of Mahindra Intertrade said.“Auto recycling (or scrappage), if implemented as per global standards, is not only environment-friendly, but also saves energy costs and minimises reliance on alternate resources,”. The capacity of the first plant will be 1-1.5 lakh tonnes depending on the product mix. It will begin commercial production by March 2018, Singh added.

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