About half of the 20,000 locally produced vehicles have been manufactured just within 2014, highlighting the rapid growth that the production site has recently experienced.
“By crossing the production mark of 20,000 trucks, we achieved the next milestone of our DICV success story”, stated Erich Nesselhauf, CEO and Managing Director, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles. “We have transformed the Indian truck industry with our modern trucks. That’s confirmed by our customers and proven by a high acceptance in the market due to excellent Quality of our products as well as best Sales and After Sales experiences.”
About DICV’s production site
The DICV plant in Chennai/Oragadam produces trucks and engines of the three brands BharatBenz, FUSO and Mercedes-Benz. Since the start of production of heavy-duty trucks in June 2012, DICV raised the production volume monthly. The product portfolio grew by several variants of heavy-duty trucks, followed by medium-duty trucks in the last months. Along with the trucks presented in January 2014, three tractor trailers and one truck for construction-mining purposes, BharatBenz now offers vehicles in the range from 9t to 49t. In addition DICV assembles the Mercedes-Benz Actros from CKD (completely knocked down) kits in Oragadam.
Since May 2013, DICV has also added FUSO trucks to its production portfolio in Oragadam. They are determined for the Asian and African growth markets; with Indonesia and Uganda being recently launched. Under the umbrella of Daimler Trucks Asia, the company works closely together with the Japanese subsidiary of Daimler, Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation (MFTBC).
Next to trucks, BharatBenz- and Mercedes-Benz Buses will roll off at the new bus manufacturing plant which is constructed within the existing premises of DICV. The bus plant is spread across an area of 113,000 square meters and will be completed by the second quarter of 2015. An investment of 50 million euro has been earmarked for the bus project for an installed capacity of 1,500 units in the initial phase. The capacity can be further expanded to 4,000 units subsequently. The DICV plant will thus be the only Daimler Truck plant worldwide that manufactures three brands of trucks and buses under one roof.