Subros’ Manesar plant catches fire, production shifted to Noida plants

Subros Ltd's Manesar plant, which manufactures air-conditioning systems mainly for Maruti Suzuki India, caught fire on May 29.

The fire was caused by a short circuit at the plant premises and the strong winds that swept the capital on Sunday evening further aggravated the situation, spreading the flames across the plant quickly. 

Autocar Professional spoke to Ramesh Suri, chairman of Subros, who said it was very unfortunate as the Manesar plant has suffered quite a bit of damage, but as of now everything is under control and the management is making all efforts to bring back the situation to normalcy. “We are taking stock of the situation. It will take a day or two to assess the entire damage at the facility and to maintain the continuity of supplies to our biggest customer, Maruti Suzuki.”

Subros Ltd, founded in 1985 is a joint venture company with 40 percent stake held by the Suri family and 13 percent each held by Denso Corporation and Suzuki Motor Corporation. It leads in the manufacture of thermal products for automotive applications in India, in technical collaboration with Denso.

The auto component maker has two manufacturing plants at Noida, in addition to facilities at Manesar, Pune, Chennai and Sanand with an annual capacity of 1.5 million AC kits per annum. Its R&D centre and tool room is also based at Noida.

Suri said only the maintenance people were present at the Manesar facility at the time of the short circuit and the firefighters took some time to arrive, due to which the fire spread speedily, aided by the strong winds.

To ensure that supplies to the largest carmaker in the country are not hit, Subros has shifted the production of its AC kits made at the Manesar plant to its Noida and Greater Noida plants and is optimistic that things will be normal soon.

Other than Maruti, Subros also supplies to Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Renault-Nissan and Force Motors among passenger vehicle manufacturers. On the commercial vehicle front, the company is a supplier to Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Force Motors, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles, Renault-Nissan and Ashok Leyland.