Indian automobile manufacturer Tata Motors plans to set up a 36,000 vehicle/yr scrapping facility in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in line with India's aim to increase domestic scrap metal processing capacity and reduce dependency on scrap imports.
Tata Motors signed an initial agreement with the government of Gujarat on 13 August to create a registered vehicle scrapping facility in Ahmedabad, the same day India's prime minister Narendra Modi launched the country's national vehicle scrapping policy. Tata Motors will set up the scrapping centre in association with a partner, it said.
In line with its aims to reduce pollution, India's automobile scrapping policy will phase out unfit and polluting vehicles and promote recovery of aluminium, copper, zinc, nickel and steel, in addition to lithium from electric vehicles and batteries.
India's minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari said at an investor summit in Gujarat that the vehicle scrapping policy is targeting recovery of 99pc of material from vehicles and plans to channel used materials such as copper, aluminium, steel, rubber and plastic back into production, thereby reducing the cost of manufacturing by about 40pc.
The national scrapping policy will likely become effective from 1 October.
Indian private passenger vehicles have a registration life of 15 years and commercial vehicles have a registration life of 10 years, after which they tend to become more polluting.
India will set up evaluation centres through private-public partnerships to ascertain the fitness of vehicles once they have reached the end of their registration cycle. If found unfit, vehicles will not gain a renewal certificate and will be scrapped.
Under the policy, owners who scrap their vehicles will get a value ranging from 4pc to 6pc of the ex-showroom price of the old vehicle, a discount of 5pc on buying new vehicles by showing the scrapping certificate, no registration fees and a rebate on road tax.
Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL) is also setting up a vehicle dismantling and recycling unit in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, in a joint venture with Toyota Tsusho Group and expects it to be operational in the current financial year ending March 2022.
