Talegaon plant to be ready by Aug-Sept

Tiruchi: The new plant of General Motors India, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors Corporation, being set up on an area of 300 acres with an investment of Rs 1,400 crore at Talegaon in Maharashtra will be ready for operation by August–September.

With the setting up of the Talegaon plant, the overall investment of the General Motors in India would be Rs 3,400 crore, the company’s Vice President – Marketing, Sales & Aftersales, Mr Ankush Arora, told the media. He said that the company was building the capacity to satisfy domestic needs.

The plant will have the installed capacity to produce 1.4 lakh units to start with augmenting GM India’s existing 85,000 unit capacity at Halol in Gujarat.

Manufacturing six models at present, the company had registered a growth of 74 per cent in 2007 producing 60,000 units. “We have made a good start in the first three months in 2008 registering a growth of 57 per cent.” The company was aiming at manufacturing 90,000 units in the current year.

Claiming that the Chevrolet was the fastest growing brand in the automobile sector, Mr Arora said the company had embarked on the task of expanding its network across the country. The sales outlets would increase to 145 and the service outlets to 160.

As for its plans in Tamil Nadu, Mr Arora said new sales and service outlets would come up in Thanjavur, Nagercoil, Udhagamandalam and Tirupur.

The northern region accounted for 40 per cent of the sales followed by the South and the West. In Delhi and its suburbs alone, the company was selling 1,200 cars per month followed by Mumbai with 650-700 cars a month, Chennai and Bangalore with 250 units each every month.

The company was exporting cars to Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, he said.