Tata Motors to roll out Daewoo trucks in India

Tuesday, 13 July 2004, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: India's leading truck manufacturer Tata Motors Ltd., which acquired the Daewoo commercial vehicle division in South Korea early this year, plans to introduce its trucks in India in the next 12 months. The trucks, with 200-400 horsepower and 49-tonne freight capacity, will be marketed in India and other select countries as part of Tata's strategy to enter the global transportation market. Ravi Kant, executive director for Tata Motors commercial business unit, told reporters here Monday the high-capacity Daewoo trucks would compete with Volvo in the same segment. "In the next 12 months, we will ship Daewoo trucks into India from our Korean plant, acquired this February. Our intention is to provide heavy duty logistics solutions to the Indian transport sector and compete with global players like Volvo," Kant said on the sidelines of the ninth International Symposium on Logistics, being held here at the Indian Institute of Management. After it acquired the Daewoo truck-manufacturing unit at a cost of $100 million, the company introduced a new truck, Novas, in the Korean market, and received a good response. "In view of its initial success in the Korean market, we are planning to launch Novas in select countries," Kant said. The truck-making arm of bankrupt Korean Daewoo Motors is the second largest manufacturer of heavy-duty vehicles with a capacity of 20,000 units per annum. Earlier, delivering the keynote address at the symposium, Kant said globalisation had brought radical changes, creating demand for logistics. "Globalisation is leading to decentralisation and competition. We need to cut cost to compete in the global market place. Logistics is one such area where we can cut cost," Kant noted. Tata Motors has developed an accurate econometric forecast technique for better supply and logistics. As a result, the company has managed to reduce outbound material by 23 percent and export outbound efficiency by 25-30 percent. Kant also revealed the company was planning to offer complete logistic solutions to different industry verticals like cement, steel and petrochemicals.
Source: IANS