Journalism of Courage
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Friday formally inaugurated its first assembly plant in India at Chikli near Pune. The plant will assemble Land Rover Freelander 2 vehicles in a completely knocked down (CKD) form that will be delivered to it from JLR’s Halewood manufacturing plant in Liverpool UK. Present for the launch were Carl Peter Forster,Group CEO and MD,Tata Motors Ltd,PM Telang-MD India Operations,Tata Motors Ltd,Dr Ralph Speth CEO Jaguar Land Rover,John Edwards Global Brand Director Land Rover,Frank Klass Global Head Communications,Jaguar Land Rover,and Rohit Suri,Head-Premier Car Division,Tata Motors.
Jaguar Land Rover was acquired by Tata Motors three years ago and we opened our first dealership one and a half years back. Now we have launched our first assembly plant. We are basically looking deeply at the Indian Markets and hope to increase our presence in the markets here, Forster said.
The plant,whose capacity was not disclosed by JLR CEO,Dr Ralph Speth,will be used to assemble the Freelander 2,TD4 SE Automatic and the SD4 HSE Automatic. The JLR brand is located globally in 170 markets and we have around 2300 dealerships. The reason as to why the brand is making a headway in India is because it has contributed 1043 million GBP to the Tata Motors brand. Also as compared to last year the sales of the JLR brand has increased by 19 per cent,” Speth said.
While Jaguar and the Land Rover both have seen a 49 per cent rise in China,in India the sales have been up by 25 per cent in 20009-2010 and by just under 200 per cent in the last year. Elaborating further Rohit Suri,head premier car division,Tata Motors said,While we sold only 200 cars in 2009-2010,the figure jumped up to 891. By the end of September we will be looking to open 14 outlets in 12 metros across the country. Depending upon the sales we will be stepping up the production at this plant gradually.
Forster added,The question of manufacturing the entire car locally will take time as we will gradually move from sourcing parts from the UK to local ones over a period of time. In fact we aim to develop a R&D centre which will aim to design new body chassis,engine derivatives,and also introduce new vehicles itself. The Indian market may not have the volumes in car sales like China (27500 vehicles sold in 2010) but the growth rate is phenomenal and it has gotten the international markets already interested and ready to invest here. That is an important reason as to why we have chosen to open a manufacturing unit here.
