I N D I A ’ S N O . 1 M A G A Z I N E F O R A U T O M O T I V E N E W S , V I E W S & A N A LY S I S
Auto Monitor
Vol. 12 No. 30
www.a mo n l i n e .i n
17 September 2012
24 Pages
FOCUS
TECHNOLOGY
NEW MATERIALS
LED AMBIENT LIGHTING SOLUTIONS FOR CARS
Pg 9-10
` 50
Pg 12
Volvo to roll out its heaviest made-in-India truck Nabeel A Khan New Delhi
A
s the adage goes ‘Survival of the fittest’, Volvo India is gearing up to tune itself to the impending competition as new players are making their way into the Indian premium truck market. The company will launch its biggest truck ever built in India by October 2012. The 10/4 truck with five axles is meant for
The upgradation will include new five and eight (medium duty) litre engines developed at the Pithampur plant that would be exported for global needs of the Volvo trucks
the mining sector customers. As the next step, it is looking to modernise its trucks produced under the joint venture with Eicher by injecting the same with Volvo technology. “The main reason behind the launch of this truck is to increase the loading capacity by 27 percent and boost the earning of the customers,” Managing Director, Volvo India, Philippe Divry, recently told Auto Monitor. The truck will be rolled out from the Bangalore plant. Under the joint venture with Eicher, Volvo has presence in the mass segment truck business in India. Now, the global truck maker is planning to upgrade the majority of the Eicher range of trucks with Volvo technology at the same time maintaining the cost parameters. The upgrade programme will include a change of engines for which, new five and eight litre (medium duty) engines have
he has a good understanding of the Indian market and will take a focused approach and operate in a niche area to ensure a sustained success of Volvo in India. “Firstly, I have business development experience in the countries like Russia, China, and I think is Philippe Divry, Managing Director, Volvo India important in been developed at the Pithampur India to understand the market, plant. The engine will also be what customer wants and we used for the global needs of the have to decide as to what we want Volvo trucks and will be exported to offer and be firm on it. We canfrom India. not be everything to everyone as Divry, with over 22 years this is such big market. We have of experience including in the to find out the dimension and countries like China, France area where we want to progress and Russia, who recently joined and have the presence,” pointed Volvo India as MD, stated that out Divry.
The company will look at expansion of its Eicher range and hopes to double the volume and increase the market share. Volvo is already the leader in the premium segment and claims to hold over 60 percent market shares in the Indian mining segment. “The current logjam and blocking situation in the mining sector will be resolved soon and that will help the market bounce back,” he added. Divry will also give thrust on increasing company’s market share in the heavy duty truck segment and hopes to attain a market share of 15 percent by 2015 from current four to five percent. He is of the opinion that the current blip in the CV segment is cyclic and prevalent across all global markets. He added that increasing competition is good for an emerging economy like India as it gives an impetus to the development of market.
Ring Plus Aqua to develop flexplates for Tata Aria Anand Mohan Nashik
R
ing Plus Aqua (RPA) is in the process of designing, developing and testing flexplates to be used in the automatic gearbox of the Tata Aria. Tata Motors is
DATA MONITOR Top 5 Car Makers Company
Aug-11
Aug-12
Change
Maruti
77,086
50,129
-34.97%
TML
21,752
29,123
33.89%
Hyundai
26,677
28,257
5.92%
M&M
18,088
24,329
34.50%
TKM
11,679
13,995
19.83%
Top 5 Car Exporters Company
Aug-11
Aug-12
Change
Hyundai
24,353
18,629
-23.50%
Nissan
8,905
7,516
-15.60%
Maruti
14,356
4,025
-71.96%
Ford
1534
2512
63.75%
TML
296
802
170.95%
* Source: SIAM/ ** Excluding exports/ *** all sub segments considered/ ^ excluding MRPL
believed to have sent the automatic variant of the Aria for testing in Germany. It is likely to be launched in 2014. RPA currently supplies flexplates to Mahindra Navistar and Eicher for products exported to North America as well as to Cummins in North America. The company manufactures ring gears, flexplates, integral shaft bearings, sheet metal pulleys and machined components. A major contributor to the company is its flagship product—ring gears. It supplies ring gears in the diameter ranging from 150 mm to 1,500 mm for CVs and passenger vehicles as well as for marine applications. Speaking about the compa ny to Auto Monitor, President-Engineering Business, Raymond, Harshal Jayavant said, “Historically, we have always been a commercial vehicle major but now CVs and passenger vehicles have an equal share.” He added, “During the last recession when CV sales were hit badly, we could sustain it because we had Hyundai and the Tata Indica to supply to, so
company’s production line to cater to other OEMs. Tata Motors accounted for around 40 percent of RPA’s production when the Raymond Group acqu i red t he company but now a wider portfolio has reduced the share to eight percent. Caterpillar Harshal Jayavant, President-Engineering Business, Raymond is biggest client our production was running at in the international market fol60 percent capacity. It was then lowed by Fiat in Europe. that we realised that we need to Expansion Plans have presence across segments.” RPA had been a debt-free comThe profitability is higher in the pany till the acquisition of Trinity CV segment but larger volumes India Ltd, a Pune-based forged from the passenger car business component manufacturer. Chief make up for lower margins in Executive Officer, RPA, Laxman that segment, he added. Katakkar commented, “We The advantage for RPA is that bought this company early this their machines are capable of year and are already evaluating manufacturing gears from any on ways to push the capacity to manufacturer by just feeding valfive to six million units or higher. ues in to the system. As demand Here is where our value addition from one OEM comes down, there is likely to kick in. Our expansion is sufficient flexibility within the
has been not just multiplying what we had; it has been done in terms of a qualitative change in the processing technology. It has led to a three-four time improvement in its productivity.” The company entered a JV with the US based AJ Rose to manufacture pulleys, pulleybracket assemblies, engines, transmissions and air conditioning systems components, water pump components and light & heavy gauge precision stampings. Jayavant did not disclose the details on the likely acquisitions but he did state that the company is evaluating some interesting proposals from small and mediu m-si z ed ma nu fac t u rer s in Maharashtra. “When we were at three million two years ago, our team said that we could take it to 4.5 million units. We completed that expansion last March, but then the Rose engineering plant moved out to an adjacent facility since they were also growing and needed more space. So we had some more space at the plant. In December, the capacity will be increased to 5.2 million units,” said Jayavant.