April 18: Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), the wholly-owned Daimler subsidiary, has inaugurated its impressive truck-building facility at Oragadam, Chennai. The state-of-the-art plant with an initial capacity of 36,000 vehicles was constructed in a record time of 24 months and will see up to 90 percent localisation within the next three years. DICV’s total investment is Rs 44 billion (over €700 million) including the manufacturing facility for BharatBenz brand trucks as well as R&D.
The facility will produce the BharatBenz product range for the Indian volume market. While some truck models are based on the Mercedes-Benz Axor platform, others are built on the Fuso Canter series. The start of production of the BharatBenz heavy-duty trucks is scheduled for the third quarter of 2012.
The Daimler subsidiary Daimler Financial Services will offer financing and insurance products for dealers and customers.
The plant was inaugurated by J Jayalalitha, chief minister of Tamil Nadu, along with Dr Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the Board of Management Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars; Andreas Renschler, Daimler Board of Management member responsible for Daimler Trucks and Daimler Buses; and Marc Listosella, CEO and managing director of DICV.
The 160-hectare manufacturing site also houses an integrated R&D centre and a state-of-the-art test track. The plant is one of only three Daimler truck plants worldwide to combine truck assembly and components production at one location. DICV’s CEO Marc Listosella said that more than 40 percent of its suppliers are located within a 40km radius.
Dr Dieter Zetsche said at the inauguration: “Our new Oragadam-Chennai plant shares Daimler’s stringent quality standards with its sister plants around the world and is unique. It is the only Daimler plant in the world that houses products which combine Indian engineering with German and Japanese DNA under a single roof. This way, we are optimally positioning ourselves for one of the world’s strongest and fastest-growing truck markets.” He added, "India is not only an emerging market, it is a thriving market. If India's economy were to be a car, it'd be the splendid Mercedes SLS AMG."
Andreas Renschler said that at present, only 4 percent of trucks in India belong to the 'Modern domestic category' and that this number will go up to 80 percent by 2020. "There will be around 70 dealers in 12 states to begin with for Bharatbenz and by 2014, we will have 100 dealers," he added.
Speaking at the inauguration, chief minister J Jayalalitha said that Tamil Nadu will see a new industrial policy 2012 that earmarks industry- specific policies for the automobile and automotive components industries. She added, "With Daimler's success here, I wish more German companies will invest in Tamil Nadu in the future."
KARTHIK H