JLR’s parent company Tata Motors recently inaugurated a new facility for assembling JLR brand vehicles in India. The assembly is located adjacent to the older Tata facility in Pune. This space was originally leased to be used as a production plant to Mercedes. The new JLR facility has already started assembling the Freelander 2, a Land Rover model.
These vehicles are supplied from the Halewood manufacturing facility of JLR located in Liverpool, UK as CKD units. The MD and CEO of Tata Motors, Carl-Peter Foster, said that their productions could increase as well. Their portfolio can be increased to include cars as well following demand.
Foster also said that by acquiring JLR, Tata is now a global firm, whereas JLR could make the best use of engineering capabilities that both India and Tata has to offer. Foster also said that this is a great opportunity for sourcing low cost high quality components, adding that they have already begun sourcing.
He also said that it is now safe to pronounce India as an international hub for manufacturing for the domestic market as well as for export. The CEO of JLR, Dr. Ralf Speth, said that they plan to establish the JLR as one of India’s most demanded vehicle brand.
In the last fiscal year, JLR managed to sell around 891 units in India from their two dealerships. The company now plans to increase their presence to all of the major cities and metros in India. They also plan on increasing their dealership to 14 outlets by September 2012-end. As of now, 100 Freelander models built at their Pune plant have been spent to their dealerships.
Their Pune plant will as of now produce two different variants of the Freelander 2 model, the Automatic SD4 HSE and the Automatic TD4 SE. both the models have a response system according to terrain, sunroof and sat navigation system as their standard features. The models have a starting price of Rs.33.89 lakh according to ex-showroom Mumbai, in comparison to the CBU model priced at Rs.38 lakh. JLR also intends to gradually increase domestic content in their products.
