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Daimler's new bus facility near Chennai to go onstream by second quarter

This will be the first Daimler plant worldwide to produce trucks, buses, and engines for a total of three brands

BS Reporter Chennai
Daimler India Commercial Vehicle Pvt. Ltd. (DICV), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler AG, Germany, said its new 50 million bus facility near Chennai would go onstream by second quarter. This will be the first Daimler plant worldwide to produce trucks, buses, and engines for a total of three brands. Meanwhile the company has started exporting bus chassis from India.

In a statement the company said construction of the DICV bus plant, which started in March 2014 is progressing well and the company expect to start production t the end of the second quarter. The facility, which is coming at Oragadam inside the DICV's existing facility, will manufacture Mercedes Benz and BharatBenz buses at the plant.

 

Spread across an area of 113,000 square meters, the plant is being built within the existing premises of DICV. The plant will have an installed capacity of 1,500 vehicles per year in the initial phase, and can be expanded to 4,000 units subsequently. Once construction is completed, the facility in Oragadam will be the first Daimler plant worldwide to produce trucks, buses, and engines for a total of three brands.

Meanwhile, the company started exporting bus chassis. The shipment was delivered at Egypt's capital Cairo. The products in question are nine-tonne bus chassis that MCV will equip with bodies in Cairo. Starting immediately, the finished vehicles will be sold as Mercedes-Benz-brand buses through MCV's nationwide sales network.

"The export of bus chassis from India to Egypt is yet another demonstration of how we are successfully leveraging on our global presence," commented Hartmut Schick, Head, Daimler Buses, adding that the company's global production network allows to offer appropriate and competitive products for every market.

The bus chassis with front-mounted engines are manufactured at the Oragadam facility, near Chennai, and delivered from there to Egypt. The bus chassis are rolled out from the same assembly line as that of BharatBenz trucks, as they are technologically similar to the medium-duty BharatBenz trucks. As a result, Daimler was able to begin with exports before the bus plant was completed at the Oragadam site.

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First Published: Feb 10 2015 | 4:44 PM IST

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