Not surprisingly, given the Tata Group’s major interests in the UK, I spend a good deal of time meeting representatives from the company. Most weeks I see someone from the one of the Group’s many divisions, and April has been no exception.
Shortly after Easter we welcomed to Mumbai the First Minister of Wales, the Rt Hon Carwyn Jones, and a business delegation. For many in Wales the steel industry is critical to their future, so we arranged a meeting for the First Minister with one of my most important contacts in Tata, Mr Muthuraman, the Vice Chair of Tata Steel.
He underlined to his Welsh visitors Tata Steel’s plans for a range of new investments in their Port Talbot plant, all designed to make the works one of the best of its kind in Europe, and globally. As a result the First Minister was able to return to Cardiff and inform the Assembly and thousands of Tata employees that the Group plan to invest no less than £800M in Port Talbot over the next five years – as big a vote of confidence in the future of the industry as there could possibly be.
The First Minister also met briefly with another of Tata’s key executives, Mr Jamwal, a senior adviser to the Group’s Chairman Ratan Tata on international business and a member of Tata Industries Board, which acts among other things as an incubator for potential new investments.
Jamwal told us that representatives of a UK company, Blaydon Jets, were visiting Mumbai shortly, and with his team’s rapid help I met Paul Barrett, their chairman, and Philip Lelliott for breakfast five days later. I had heard Ratan Tata speak effusively about Blaydon’s new technology, so I was keen to meet some of the company’s management.
Paul and Philip explained to me the background to their technology, which provided the experimental ideas behind the Jaguar C-X75 hybrid electric concept car, and is aimed at creating miniaturised jet engines for a variety of uses in automotive and other sectors.
Tata have now become a minority stake-holder in the company, which is of course a great boost for Blaydon, as was the visit to their new engineering centre in Coventry by Ratan Tata earlier this year.
Blaydon and Tata are optimistic that the UK company’s advanced engineering concepts will eventually be deployable by Tata Motors, one of whose key plants I also visited in April. There have been important developments for the UK at the plant in Pune, some 3 hours drive from Mumbai, since I was last there. This year JLR started to assemble the Freelander vehicle in the Pune works. The operation is running smoothly, and although the assembly line is very different from those for the mass market passenger cars Tata produce in Pune, it could be crucial to helping JLR develop the Indian market.
Many of their competitors like Audi, BMW and Mercedes are already assembling vehicles in India, which enables cars to be taxed at a lower level than fully imported versions. So the developments of JLR’s assembly line in Pune is not in any sense a threat to jobs in the UK, but rather represents a significant boost to JLR’s prospects in this rapidly expanding market. It helps the competitiveness in India of JLR, which is now planning to have a Jaguar also assembled in Pune later this year.
After the heat and bustle of the Tata plant, and a stimulating evening meeting with the British Business Group in Pune led by the energetic Vandana Saxena-Puria, I was generously offered the use of his suite by Ravi Kant, the Head of Tata Motors, at the company’s guest house.
Set in woods with an extraordinary array of birdlife, and nestling by a man -made lake which could have been taken for one of Sweden’s natural beauties, the contrast could not be greater with the plant works employing over 18,000 staff less than a kilometre away!