Daimler India Commercial VEhicles Inaugurates its Bus Plant at Oragadam,Chennai Wednesday May 27,2015

 

Global automobile major Daimler inaugurated its Rs 425 crore bus facility here on Wednesday. The company also simultaneously unveiled six new products for the Indian market, including a luxury bus and three heavy duty trucks.

The plant, spread over 28 acres in Oragadam, will be equipped to roll out 1,500 units per annum, and the capacity can be expanded to 4,000 units if the market demands.
“This new plant will manufacture buses in the 9, 16 and 16 plus ton range,” said Wolfgang Bernhard, member of the Board of Management, Daimler.

With the launch of the plant, the sprawling Daimler facility in Chennai becomes the only Daimler plant worldwide to produce trucks, buses and engines for three brands – Mercedes-Benz, BharatBenz and Fuso – in the same location.

The company also launched three buses, two intra-city buses under BharatBenz brand and an inter-city bus under the Mercedes-Benz brand. The BharatBenz buses are intended as school and staff buses.

Hartmut Schick, head of Daimler Buses, said, “We expect the volume of the Indian market for buses weighing more than 8 tons  to more than double by 2020.”

The localisation levels for these buses will be 90% for the BharatBenz brand and 75% for the Mercedes-Benz brands.

Daimler also unveiled a mining truck with a heavy duty engine that will be available in two variants. The company is also planning to launch a truck for transporting heavy-lift project cargo later in the year.

 Erich Nesselhauf, MD and CEO of Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), said that the company has already rolled out over 20,000 trucks out of the Oragadam plant.

The plant is set to create 1,300 job opportunities in Tamil Nadu, 300 for DICV and an additional 1,000 at Wrightbus International, which would operate the plant for Daimler.
“Exports from the plant are also all set to roll out by the third quarter of this quarter. We are planning to export these buses to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in the Middle East,” said Schick.