Tata Makes Progress Towards Taking Over Ford’s India Plant

It has inked a memorandum with the Gujarat government to acquire all Ford India assets at Sanand

• Tata seeks acquisition of the land, buildings, manufacturing facilities and employees of Ford’s Sanand plant.

• It expects to reach a production capacity of up to 4 lakh units per year from this facility.

• The takeover is pending transaction agreements between Tata and Ford.

• The new facility should be ready to manufacture Tata models in a few months.

• Ford’s facility is located close to Tata Motors’s Sanand plant. 

When a carmaker ceases production in a country, it’s almost inevitable that its manufacturing facilities will be acquired by another automotive brand. Tata has been eyeing the Ford India plant in Sanand, Gujarat, and is closer than ever to acquiring it. In the latest Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Limited with the state government for the potential acquisition of the land, buildings, and the plant with the manufacturing machinery and equipment. It also seeks transfer of eligible employees of Ford India that ran the vehicle manufacturing operations in Sanand. Ford will have to lease back the land and manufacturing facilities from Tata to continue manufacturing powertrains at Sanand.

Related: Ford Ceases Local Production In India, To Only Import CBUs

The next step in the acquisition would be the signing of the final transaction agreements between Tata and Ford.

Tata plans to achieve a production capacity of 3 lakh units per year, scalable to 4 lakh units, from this facility after making the necessary modifications to manufacture its own models. It will be used for the production of combustion engined and pure electric models. Since it is near Tata’s existing manufacturing plant around Sanand, it is expected to be a smooth transition over the next few months.

Once Tata is able to start producing models at the old Ford plant, buyers can expect the delivery times for their orders to come down notably. Currently, popular Tata models like the Punch, Nexon and Nexon EV attract long waiting periods of up to a few months.