DICV or Daimler India Commercial Vehicles that is a completely owned subsidiary of Daimler has inaugurated its latest truck manufacturing plant at Oragadam in the state of Tamil Nadu. This state-of-the-art manufacturing facility has a starting capacity of 36,000 units annually. The major point of attraction to this particular plant is that it has been built in a record time of flat 24 months, while it will see close to 90 percent localization of its production in the coming three years. The total input of investment to establish this plant, which includes the Research & Development wing as well as the manufacturing unit for the truck brand of BharatBenz, has been somewhere around Rs.44 billion that is a little over 700 million in EURO,.
This manufacturing plant will make the product range of Bharat Benz brand for the truck market of India. Few of the truck models are made on the Axor platform of Mercedes-Benz, while other models are constructed on the Fuso Canter series. From the third quarter of this year the manufacturing of the heavy-duty trucks of BharatBenz is scheduled to begin. The best part here is that the subsidiary firm of Daimler, the Daimler Financial Services, will be offering insurance and financing products for customers and dealers. This should definitely add on to the sales volume that is being expected by the firm.
This new plant has been inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, J Jayalalitha. Chairman, Board of Management, Daimler AG and Chief, Mercedes-Benz Cars, Dr Dieter Zetsche along with the member of Daimler Board of Management, Andreas Renschler who is the key person responsible for the smooth production of trucks and buses of Daimler, and CEO. & MD of DIVC, March Listosella were also present at this historical moment at Oragadam, Chennai.
Equipped with a test track that is made on state-of-the-art design and technology with an R & D integrated centre, this manufacturing plant is spread in a 160 hectare area of land. This manufacturing unit is one of the three truck plants of Daimler in the whole world. Here truck component manufacturing and assembly will bedone at one single location. According to March Listosella, the CEO & MD of DIVC, more than 40 per cent of the required supplies of the facility are procured from a radius of 40 km only. This means the production here will happen in a cost efficient and timely fashion without any stress.
Dr Dieter Zetsche was very enthusiastic when he commented, “That the new plant of the firm at Orgadam, Chennai will share the stringent standards of quality by which Daimler stands together with its other manufacturing facilities around the globe and that makes it very genuine. This manufacturing plant is unique in its own manner because it will make products that would have a combination of Japanese and German DNA with Indian engineering under one single umbrella. This way, the firm is making its position in an optimized method to be one of the globes most potent and fast growing heavy duty truck markets.” Later he added, “India as a nation is not only an emerging automobile market but it’s a very thriving market in its own right too. If India’s economy were to be just a car, it would have been just an excellent Mercedes SLS AMG.”
As per Andreas Renschler, right now only 4 percent of trucks that ply on the Indian roads belong to the category of ‘Modern Domestic’, but this volume is sure to go up at 80 percent by the year 2020. He told the correspondent that with a beginning of 70 dealers in 12 states of India for the Bharat Benz brand of trucks, they will be having 100 dealers by the year 2014.
J Jayalalitha, the Chief Minister, Tamil Nadu said at the inauguration ceremony, “The state would see the new policy of 2012 for industries, for they will tag the industry-specific policies for the automotive component and the automobile industry of Tamil Nadu.” She also said, “With the successful entry of Daimler here, I personally wish for more German firms to invest in the state of Tamil Nadu in the near future.”
