Scania gets ready to transport India

Scania Commercial Vehicles India is currently evaluating independent coachbuilders for a partner that could potentially bodywork its first bus, based on the versatile K-series rear-engine chassis that will be produced at its new Regional Product Centre (RPC) near Bangalore.

Last month the company announced it is investing Rs 150 crore initially in the construction of a CKD assembly operation for 2,000 trucks and 1,000 bus chassis, a central parts warehouse, and its own country headquarters, at the emerging Narasapura industrial area in Kolar district seven kilometres further down Old Madras Road from its Swedish compatriot Volvo’s Indian base in Hoskote.

If everything goes according to plan, the RPC will roll out its first Scania P410 mining tipper, complete with bought-in bodywork, early next year. At present, the P380 chassis for the Indian market is imported by Larsen & Toubro from Scania’s Zwolle factory in the Netherlands and bodyworked by Hyva in Mahape, Navi Mumbai.

Next on the line will be the R500 6×4 tractors for heavy haulage, followed by the K-series chassis towards the end of 2013. Alongside preparations to assemble its first bus chassis, Scania India will progressively invest up to Rs 100 crore more to set up a service workshop and a bus body facility at which it plans to produce its Citywide LE suburban model, its first city bus designed for world markets, followed by Scania-branded coaches in future.

The bus factory should be up and running “within five years”, according to managing director Henrik Fagrenius. Scania India would then be the only group company besides Polish subsidiary Scania Production Slupsk that builds complete buses. More interestingly, the Regional Product Centre India could also be the first Scania-owned entity in the world to manufacture coaches!

Under its Scania +20 global strategy the world’s most profitable bus and coach supplier (Scania only builds chassis and bodies for city buses itself, but sells only complete buses) has been moving to a unified family of Scania-designed and -engineered buses and coaches, and reduced the number of regional bodybuilder partners it works with from 104 to 20.

Depending on the results of its evaluation, one Indian bodybuilder might be given the opportunity to become a member of that very exclusive group. Irizar and Marcopolo, Scania’s largest specialist bodyworking partners worldwide, are already active in India, but the former is pretty much married to Ashok Leyland and the latter to Tata Motors. That clearly rules them out as potential partners.

The only buses Scania builds itself are the urban and suburban models Citywide LF and LE, and the OmniCity low-floor and OmniLink low-entry models of an earlier generation, for the European market. Scania-branded intercity buses and coaches for Europe are built by Irizar (i4, Century, PB) and Lahden Autokori (OmniExpress). With Marcopolo in Brazil, Scania builds city buses and coaches both for Latin America and the Middle East.

In early 2010 it introduced the Scania Touring coach, its first “world” product, built by Higer Bus (Suzhou King Long). This 70-percent-owned subsidiary of Xiamen King Long jousts with Marcopolo for second rank (after Yutong) in the list of the world’s largest bus-manufacturing enterprises.

For Scania, it makes a lot of sense to engage an external bodybuilder, at least initially, to be able to deliver the high levels of customisation required in the premium coach market it wants to target first. But Volvo’s unsatisfactory experience with Azad very likely weighed in its decision to go it alone in the long term.

ELIOT LOBO