Tata directors take environmental tour

By Richard Milne in London
Published: April 19 2009 17:11

Senior managers from Tata will visit Europe and some of the continent’s biggest companies this week as the Indian conglomerate seeks to catch up with western business on environmental protection moves.
Led by JJ Irani, a director of the Tata Sons holding company and a former head of Tata Steel, the group will visit companies such as Siemens and Ikea as well as a former chief executive of BP and ex-chairman of Royal Dutch Shell.

“Tata is new at this game,” Mr Irani told the Financial Times, explaining that the Indian group had not concentrated much on environmentally friendly products until now.
“What we wanted was the experience of other global conglomerates who have been on this journey before,” he said.
Scandinavian companies form the backbone of the trip with Mr Irani and other Tata executives also going to visit the chief executives of shipping company Wilh Wilhelmsen, telecommunications group Telenor and risk management company Det Norske Veritas, as well as senior managers at fertiliser group Yara and Statoil Hydro, the Norwegian oil company.
“We are not shy of learning,” said Mr Irani, who is a director of a number of Tata companies including its steel and automotive businesses. “We are behind as far as the world is concerned . . . There are many Scandinavian companies because they are more conscious of this than the rest of us.”
Tata has come in for heavy criticism from some environmentalists about the Nano, the world’s cheapest car, but the Indian company retorts that it is more fuel-efficient than a motorbike.
Tata sees a big opportunity because it operates in some of the biggest polluting sectors such as power generation, steel manufacturing and chemicals and carmaking. It has set up a group dedicated to exploring ways of becoming more environmentally friendly and has about 100 people working on it across all its companies.
The Tata managers will also meet some grandees of the oil industry including Lord Browne, the former BP chief executive, and Lord Oxburgh, ex-chairman of Shell.
They will also visit executives at banks Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank as well as Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering group.
All this has been arranged through the Global Leadership & Technology Exchange (GLTE), a grouping of companies looking to see how they can grow together in what they describe as “a low-carbon world”.
The grouping has led to co-operation between companies including General Motors and Gazprom on future car and fuel infrastructure in Russia and Wilh Wilhelmsen and Yara on nitrogen oxides. The GLTE held its last big meeting in Mumbai, India.
Mr Irani said he was taking managers from Tata companies to see how other groups behaved. “We want to see what sort of problems they face and how they deal with it so we can catch up faster.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009