Maruti Suzuki invests in new age technologies, adopts tougher environment targets for 2012-13

Car market leader Maruti Suzuki India Limited released its extensive environment strategy to bring down emissions of its operations and reduce greenhouse emission of its vehicles on the eve of World Environment Day here today. On the occasion, Mr. Shinzo Nakanishi, Managing Director and CEO said, “We have a well thought-out plan to minimise resource use, to become a greener Company and safeguard the environment. As we expand our business  and put in newer facilities, our focus will be to adopt and invest in new environment friendly technologies and practices to minimize the impact of our business on the environment.”

The broad components of the evolved environment approach, adopted the Company are ;

1.Lower carbon footprint in manufacturing operations: The Company will bring down carbon footprint of its manufacturing operations through improved operational efficiencies and constant innovation. This approach in the recent past, has brought significant results. The power consumption per car for instance has come down by nearly 30 per cent in Gurgaon in the last decade and by about the same percentage in Manesar in five years. The Company is committed to make more efforts in the area of energy efficiency. This would be especially relevant for the upcoming production facilities like Manesar Plant C. In addition, the Company is also helping its vendor partners to quickly adopt these energy efficient technologies. 66% of Maruti Suzuki’s tier I suppliers are ISO 14001 certified. The Company targets to make 100 % tier I suppliers ISO 14001 certified by end of 2012-13.

2.Identify, adopt and invest in new environment friendly technologies: The Company also pledged to invest in new, cost-effective technologies that bring down greenhouse gas emissions of its facilities. The Manesar B plant commissioned in September 2011 is the first car plant in the country that is   100 % LED. With this innovation in place, Manesar B Plant is significantly more energy efficient than any of the other plants, including the Manesar A Plant which was commissioned in Feb2006.  In addition, for the Gurgaon facility, The Company has put in place an energy audit team which is systematically identifying equipment and machinery with high energy consumption, and replacing it with more environment friendly options.