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After making history by taking over Corus and Jaguar, Indian giant Tata is eyeing on forging a partnership with Embraer, aircraft manufacturing company of Brazil.
Sources in Rio De Janerio said that talks were on with the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer for starting a joint venture for production of aircraft as Embraer, world's third largest plane manufacturer, was unable to cope up with the orders that it was getting from various countries and private players.
Tata had offered setting up of a joint venture with the aircraft giant, which is the only manufacturing firm that makes commercial 120-seater jets.
The talks are in the infancy stage but Tata, with its expertise in various fields, is considered as a serious contender for the joint venture, the sources said.
Embraer (Empresa Brasileira de Aeronutica) is the world's largest manufacturer of commercial jets of up to 120 seats, and one of Brazil's leading exporters.
Embraer's headquarters are located in Sao Paulo, and it has offices, industrial operations and customer service facilities in Brazil, the United States, France, Portugal, China and Singapore.
Founded in 1969, the company designs, develops, manufactures and sells aircraft for the commercial aviation, executive aviation, and defence and government segments.
The company also provides after sales support and services to customers worldwide. On March 31, 2008, Embraer had a workforce of 23,878 employees and a firm order backlog of $ 20.3 billion.
Earlier in February, world's leading aircraft maker Boeing and Tata Industries had agreed on a plan to form a joint-venture company that will initially include more than $ 500 million of defence-related aerospace component work in India for export to Boeing and its international customers.
Under the memorandum of agreement signed by Boeing and Tata, it is contemplated that the joint-venture company will be established by June 2008, and shortly thereafter will begin work of building Boeing aerospace components.
"It is the intent of Boeing and Tata not only to utilise the existing Tata manufacturing capability, but also to develop new supply sources throughout the Indian manufacturing and engineering communities for both commercial and defense applications," the two companies had said.
"This joint venture between Tata and Boeing is an important part of our strategy to build capabilities in defence and aerospace," Ratan Tata had said at that time.
In the same month, Singapore-based Bjets, Asia's leading private jet company catering to corporations and high net-worth individuals in the region, had announced roping in Tata group firm Indian Hotels as a 'significant investor'.
BJet's flight operations will begin in May 2008 and in India it would be headquartered in Mumbai with the entire Flight Operations Centre based out of the new Hyderabad International Airport.
The Tata Group is one of India's largest business conglomerates with revenues in 2006-07 of $ 28.8 billion (Rs 129,994 crore), the equivalent of about 3.2 per cent of the country's GDP and a workforce of over 300,000 employees.