Toyota’s upcoming diesel engine plant in Jigani which will cater to the Innova and Fortuner, is almost ready and trial production at the same will be commencing soon.
Toyota is now concentrating their mode of operations towards the diesel engine factory which will be ready to commercially produce engines by early 2016. The new plant is coming up at the outskirts of the city of Jigani which lies just south of Bengaluru and will begin with the first round of trial production very soon. Costing a total of Rs. 800 crores, the new factory will have an initial production capacity of 1 lakh units every year. This plant will address to the need for diesel engines of the Innova and Fortuner models, the engines for which are currently being imported from Japan.
In line with what other manufacturers are also doing, setting up manufacturing facilities in India is the hot new topic in the Indian automotive industry. After this factory starts rolling out diesel engines, the localisation of Toyota for its Indian operations will increase to the range of around 80 percent. However, we feel that Toyota is late with this move because the need for diesel powered vehicles shot up quite a long time back in the country.
The facility is coming up at the premises of Kirloskar Toyoda Textile Machinery, as the Japanese giant has almost completely used up its land which was available in Bidadi, where two passenger vehicles are being manufactured currently. Toyota already has a manufacturing unit for petrol engine in this area that was set up in 2011 with an investment of Rs. 500 crores.
The company had increased the annual production capacity of its two vehicle manufacturing units at Bidadi to 3,10,000 units two years ago. Utility vehicles like the Innova and Fortuner are made in the first plant while the Etios, Corolla Altis and the Camry range of cars are produced at the second one. The remaining vehicles including the Land Cruiser, Prado and Prius are brought into the country via the CBU route.
In the meantime, Toyota has no plans to launch any new models in India this year and instead will be focusing on its existing Etios line-up and other premium sedans, even after experiencing a decline in sales of over 8.5 percent in 2014.
Source – BusinessStandard.com