General Motors India intends to hire 400 employees next year for its manufacturing facility located at Halol in Gujarat. The Halol facility currently has a headcount of 1,800. It may be mentioned here that the auto sector giant plans to invest over Rs 2,200 crore ($500 million) by the end of next year for ramping up the production capacities of its existing plants at Halol in Gujarat and Talegaon in Maharashtra.
"We will be looking at adding 400 employees to steer the expansion that we have planned for the Halol plant. While we would be hiring people across different profiles but the work profiles would be mostly connected to the auto manufacturing process. We plan to launch some new products next year which will be manufactured at the Halol plant. We will be adding another shift to the current two shift format that we have here," said Karl Slym, president and managing director, General Motors India at the launch of the Chevrolet Beat's diesel variant in Gujarat.
Overall, GM will hire around 1,000 people by 2012 in line with its expansion plans. As far as Halol plant is concerned, the company has also decided to expand the capacity from 85,000 units to 1,10,000 units. Apart from its recent launch of Chevrolet Beat diesel variant, the company also had announced plans to get into the manufacturing of light commercial vehicle (LCV) by the second half of 2012.
"We are also in the process of manufacturing a stumping plant which will be ready by next year so that we would be able to manufacture our own steel parts as well. The LCV production will be done from the Halol plant and we plan to launch a new product from there. The advantage of having a manufacturing hub here ensures that we get a wider supply base here," added Slym.