Scania Group to invest in assembly plant in Bangalore

Sweden’s Scania Group said it will invest SEK200 million (US$29.7 million) in an assembly plant in Bangalore during the coming year. Scania’s ambition is to sell about 2,000 trucks, 1,000 buses and 1,500 engines per year in the Indian market within the next five years. The facility is being constructed in an industrial area 40 km east of Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state in southern India. Production is expected to start in early 2013. It is estimated that almost 800 people will be employed at the facility in the longer term. The industrial operations will consist of final assembly of truck and bus chassis and bodywork and fitting out of complete vehicles. The head office of Scania’s Indian company, complete with a service workshop and a central parts warehouse, is also being built at the same site. “The manufacturing of complete trucks locally in the country means that we can cut lead times further and broaden our product offering. Our service to customers will also be improved by having a parts depot in the country,” says Henrik Fagrenius, managing director of Scania Commercial Vehicles India. The facility in Bangalore is Scania’s seventh Regional Product Centre. The others are in Russia, Dubai, South Africa, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan. Scania has been represented in the Indian market since 2007, when a partnership was initiated with Larsen & Toubro (L&T). L&T currently operates about 10 Scania service workshops at various mining sites in India. In 2011, Scania established the company Scania Commercial Vehicles India in order to boost its presence through sales to additional segments of the Indian commercial vehicle market. (January 31, 2012)