Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s helicopter factory — the country’s largest chopper manufacturing facility — in Tumakuru district of Karnataka. Bengaluru-headquartered HAL plans to produce more than 1,000 helicopters in the range of 3-15 tonne with a total business of more than Rs 4 lakh crore over a period of 20 years at this facility in Gubbi taluk, officials said.
The factory, spread across 615 acres for which the Prime Minister laid the foundation stone in 2016, would initially manufacture Light Utility Helicopters (LUH)). It will enable India to meet its entire requirement of helicopters without import and giving much-needed fillip to the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ in helicopter design, development, and manufacture, they said.
