Commercial vehicle manufacturer Ashok Leyland Ltd., will be investing ₹500 crore during this fiscal in its bus division, said a top official.
“The capital expenditure will be used for setting up three new bus body building plants, expanding production capacity of Dubai plant and rolling out new products,” said T. Venkataraman, senior vice president - Global Buses, Ashok Leyland.
As per the plan, Ashok Leyland is setting up new bus plants in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kenya. Besides, it will doubling the production capacity of the Ras Al Khaimah Dubai plant.
“We will be investing about ₹120 crore each in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana unit. The exact locations are yet to be finalised. We are seeking 50-80 acres. As soon as the finalisation of land, we will have the plant ready in eight months. These plants will have capacity to build 2,000 buses per annum,” he said.
Ashok Leyland will be investing ₹100 crore on expanding the Dubai plant. Currently, it produces 3,800 buses. The ₹70 crore Kenya plant will be ready in 4-6 months. It will have a capacity to produce 600 vehicles per day, he said.
During 2016-17, Ashok Leyland sold 18,000 buses in domestic market and 9,000 were exported, marking a growth of 3% over the comparable year-ago period. This year, it expects its sales volume to grow by 5%.
State Transport Undertakings
Last week, Vinod K. Dasari, managing director said they had taken a conscious design of cutting down supply of buses to some of the State Transport Undertakings (STUs) as it was time consuming and more over it was not remunerative. Besides, they would enter Northern and Eastern regions.
“Each tender is different. Normally, some of the STUs ask for chassis, while body building is done by them. However, we have decided to offer it as fully built product. The fall in the business volume, will be met through newer products such as electric vehicles, Sunshine school buses and intermediate coach,” an official said.
Last year, the total industry volume of buses grew by 40% against 70% in the previous year. In other words, it grew from 9,000 to 12,000.
