Aluminium making quick inroads into Indian automotive industry

Aluminium consumption in Indian auto industry is still far below the global average. The market for automotive aluminium sheet, hence, is presently at a nascent stage. Nevertheless, the industry has already started re-aligning its focus on weight reduction of vehicles both for small and mid-sized cars as well as commercial vehicles. For the last two decades now, the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra have been building aluminium intensive buses. Top OEMs like Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), Eicher Motors and Ashok Leyland are experimenting with technologies, materials and exploring possibilities to develop lightweight, energy efficient vehicles. For them, aluminium stands as the metal of choice.

But since Indian market is still much cost conscious, especially for automobiles, the use of the white metal is moderate. Aluminium automotive bodies are costlier than their steel and cast iron counterparts. This poses as one of the major obstacles to the metal's mass market-appeal in India.

Technology is also a barrier in the Indian context. There exists a distinct lack of assembly line expertise for making lightweight aluminium-intensive automobiles in the manufacturing units.

However, India’s miniscule usage of aluminium leaves much scope for the auto industry to leverage upon. The automotive industry here is currently on a growth trajectory and is expected to reach a capitalization of $115 billion by 2020. In this context, government initiatives like ‘Make In India’ are expected to boost aluminium consumption in vehicles. The OEMs operating here can cash in on the opportunity presented to them and ramp up aluminium use in their products in a bid to catch up with the global benchmark.



Experts believe, there is a need to bring synergy between auto industry and aluminium industry, which can be achieved through a three-pronged approach:

• Develop supply chains to meet growing demand in the automotive industry
• Come up with technology solutions related to easy repair and maintenance
• Accelerate aluminium recycling and reuse activities

Presently, Indian market is flooded with cheaper aluminium alloys imports, which downstream players use to supply end products to the auto OEMs. Nearly 60 per cent of all the aluminium consumed by Indian auto industry is met through imports. Local players need to devise strategies and set goals to reduce this share to around 30 per cent over the next five or six years by improving the quality of their aluminium products. Both the upstream and downstream aluminium producers need to come forward and synergize efforts to expand their offerings used by auto OEMs.

The Aluminium Association of India (AAI) has initiated a project on design and development of lightweight urban transport buses in collaboration with the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) and IIT Bombay with support from the Ministry of Heavy Industries.