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- Mar 27, 2024
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Japanese carmaker Isuzu broke ground for its Sri City manufacturing facility today in Hyderabad. The plant is scheduled to start production by April 2016 with the assembly of the MU-7 SUV and D-Max pickup truck. The Isuzu plant will have an office, body shop, paint shop and a general assembly unit.
In phase one, only half of the plant will be utilized for the stated initial capacity of 50,000 units per year. This will be ramped up to 1.2 lakh units per annum once the plant is in full steam. Spread over 107 acres in the industrial town of Sri City, the plant is in close proximity to Chennai and the port. As a result, it benefits from a large number of component manufacturers already present in the southern region and the possibility of reduced transportation costs to the ports when exports commence. At present though, the company will focus on its Indian operations as exports are planned at a later stage.
Isuzu already assembles the MU-7 SUV in Chennai at the HM-Mitsubishi set-up where operations started only a month ago. This tie-up will last till production commences in Sri City. The D-Max is still sold as a CBU imported from Thailand but it will be assembled in India sometime in the first half of 2014. Both these vehicles put together have sold over 200 units since the first vehicle went on sale in Feb 2013. The seeding volume, says the company’s Deputy MD Shigeru Wakabayashi, has helped them study the market. Isuzu is confident to achieve sales of 50,000 units with its two products despite the Indian market not accepting lifestyle pick-ups, the Xenon and Genio being good examples. Wakabayashi says that the pick-up will be positioned in the utility segment and not the lifestyle segment as there is a huge LCV market to cater to.
The company says that it will open 60 dealerships by 2016 from its present four. In addition to showrooms in Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Chennai and Kochi, Isuzu will open five more outlets by March 2014. These include Bangalore, Tirupati, Vishakapatnam, Madurai and Delhi. All dealerships will sell the MU-7 and D-Max. Even after production commences at Sri City, prices of the MU-7 are not likely to drop from the Rs 22 lakh range it currently sells at as the prices were set according to present competition in the country said Wakabayashi.
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