Caterpillar to invest Rs 500 crore on Tamil Nadu facilities
Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin, who has already managed to lure investments worth Rs 7,016 crore during his present official visit to the US, added one more feather to his cap when Caterpillar Inc signed a MoU with the State government on Wednesday for investing Rs 500 crore to expand its existing construction manufacturing facilities in Tiruvallur and Krishnagiri districts.
A world leader in the production of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel electric locomotives, Caterpillar Inc is a the Fortune 500 company that would increase its production in its Tamil Nadu units as the MoU was signed in Chicago in the presence of Bhuvan Ananthakrishnan, Director of Caterpillar and Kirk Eppler, Senior Vice President.
Operating through four business segments - construction industries, resource industries, energy and transportation and financial products - Caterpillar manufactures machinery ranging from tractors to hydraulic excavators, backhoe loaders, motor graders, off-highway trucks, wheel loaders, agricultural tractors, and engines.
The machines are used in a wide range of industries such as construction, road building, mining, forestry, energy, transportation, and material handling. The global headquarters of the company is located in Irving, Texas, USA.
The latest MoU would help Stalin achieve the target of transforming Tamil Nadu into a US $ 1 trillion economy by 2030 even as the State continues to draw significant attention from both Indian and global industries, a trend that has accelerated since the government led by Stalin took office three years ago.
The state's higher education enrollment ratio, which is above the national average, has resulted in a skilled workforce that was a prime attraction for many foreign companies to invest in Tamil Nadu. Besides, the state had been establishing sector-specific industrial parks equipped with world-class infrastructure to further boost industrial growth, an official press release on Thursday said.
The Chief Minister’s official trip to the US, undertaken as part of efforts to attract more industrial investments to Tamil Nadu, has already seen the inking of agreements, at San Francisco and Chicago, with 16 leading global companies that had committed themselves to pump in Rs 7,016 crore into the State.
The Chief Minister’s series of meetings with senior executives of various leading global companies, inviting them to make new industrial investments, has also raised the hope of more companies opening their units in Tamil Nadu in future.