CHENNAI: With its skilled manpower and core automotive industry competence, no State has the potential to host as flourishing an aerospace industry as Tamil Nadu. This is exactly the expectation that the aerospace industry in the state has for Global Investors Meet in Chennai. According to sources, the government is also preparing a blueprint for $5 billion investment in the sector in the next five years.
It is not that the state does not have an aerospace presence. There are over 60 small and medium players catering to several domestic aerospace companies. “But we have not been able to leverage the expertise that we have so far,” pointed out N Shekhar, president of the Aerospace and Defence Industry Association of TN. The existing companies clustered in Chennai, Coimbatore, Salem and Hosur, work largely as suppliers to domestic brands.
But now, GIM is promising what decades of automotive expertise hasn’t. According to sources, there has been significant investment in this space locked in for GIM. A recent newsletter stated that `1,015 crore of investment had been locked in at the Chennai Aerospace Park (CAP), on the Sriperumbudur-Oragadam stretch, from 11 companies and another 15 are in the pipeline.
Adding momentum to the MoUs to be signed at GIM will be the ambitious blueprint under consideration. The $5 billion target for the next 5 years has been placed in the first draft of the Tamil Nadu Aerospace and Defence Industrial Policy 2015. It will seek to do exactly what the industry is expecting . The target for 10 years will be $10 billion.
“The policy is moving in the right direction and CAP is one such and we have several other likely locations - like the belt around Salem and Hosur,” said Shekhar. The companies coming to CAP include players like Vinmn Aerospace and a joint venture - Baala Har Conn Aerospace Services, a tie-up by Baala Group and the US-based Har-Conn Aerospace. What the aerospace industry in the state is really looking forward to is the entry of a large player that can stimulate the ecology. “TN has so many inherent advantages. While people refer to Bengaluru as the sector’s hub, most of the engineers working there are from this state,” he concluded.