1 month ago
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Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), the wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, has initiated expansion work at its Oragadam facility as it has reached full capacity, said a top official.
“The Oragadam plant has the capacity to produce annually 36,000 trucks and 4,000 buses. We have already reached the full capacity,” said MD & CEO Satyakam Arya during the media interaction.
“We have started accelerating the expansion plan at welding and paint shops without any major capex. The first step is to reach 45,000 vehicles. This expansion programme will go on for three years,” he said.
On Tuesday, DICV officials announced that in CY23 the domestic truck and buses sales grew by 39% from the year-earlier period, revenue by 21% and spare parts business by 21%. Export revenue grew by 30%. In CY23, DICV sold 23,400 trucks and 2,000 buses.
“It was the best ever sales and financial growth since inception. Our tipper and tractor trailer product lines grew 53% and 79% respectively. Bus sales doubled with 107% growth,” he said.
According to him, DICV undertook slew of strategic initiatives that also helped it take informed decisions on costs, tackle headwinds effectively and sharpen its focus on key areas of business.
Talking about the CY24, he said the total industry volume of trucks will remain flat at 3.50 lakh units or dip 5% lower from the previous year due to the three-month election period. The bus segment will grow by 25-30%. Overall, sales in the first half will be soft and strong in the second half.
He also said that mega trends such as regulations, alternative fuel, servitization and business methods, e-mobility products and ecosystem, scrappage policy, shifting to higher horse power or higher GVW will impact the Indian CV sector in CY24.
DICV President and Chief Business Officer (Domestic Sales and Customer Service) Sreeram Venkateswaran said that they will continue the growth momentum in CY24 and stay ahead of the market curve aided by strong push towards government infrastructure projects, new launches and expansion of dealers network.
“We are aspiring to grow. We expect Q3/Q4 to be quite strong against slow Q2. Export volume will be flat. Growth will come from domestic market,” he said.
The company has lined up 14 new products for launch. Bharat Benz Rigid heavy duty range of trucks will be followed by the launch of 12-speed Automated Manual Transmission BB trucks for construction and mining applications.
On the introduction of alternative fuel vehicles, he said that though they have all the technologies, DICV was working on electric (bus) and hydrogen fuel cell (trucks) and was evaluating LNG.
