Daimler opens Rs4,400-crore truck production facility near Chennai

Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), the India arm of German auto major Daimler AG, opened its new state-of-the-art truck production facility at Oragadam, near Chennai.

The Rs4,400-crore (€700 million) plant will manufacture BharatBenz trucks in the 7 to 49 tonne range.

The facility, situated in an area covering 160 hectares (400 acres), houses a manufacturing plant as well as a research and development center.
 
The plant will have an initial production capacity of 36,000 units per year, and could be ramped up to more than 70,000 units per year later. Production of heavy-duty BharatBenz trucks will start in the third quarter of 2012.

The plant was constructed in a record time of 24 months, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles Pvt Ltd said in a release today.

The plant was inaugurated in the presence of Tamilnadu chief minister J Jayalilithaa and members of the Daimler AG board.
 
''Our new Oragadam-Chennai plant shares Daimler's stringent quality standards with its sister plants around the world and is unique at the same time. 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,'' Dr Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz cars, said.

Diamlers plans to produce BharatBenz truck models on the Mercedes-Benz Axor platform as well as the Fuso Canter series at the new facility.