Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Friday officially opened its first assembly plant in India at Pune.
The facility will assemble the Land Rover Freelander-II vehicles which are sourced as completely knocked down (CKD) kits from the Halewood facility in Liverpool, U.K. Freelander-II is available in India in two variants, the TD4 SE Automatic and the SD4 HSE automatic and prices start at Rs.33.89 lakh (ex-Mumbai, pre-octroi).
Without giving details of the investment in the assembly plant, Ralph Speth, CEO, Land Rover, said, “We are excited about the prospect of assembling cars in Pune for the India market where we have achieved significant growth since we opened our first showroom in 2009.
“It is a great time to be expanding our operation in India due to the increasing demand for luxury products and the strength of the Indian economy”.
The company plans to be fully operational in 12 major cities across India with 14 dealer outlets. Mr. Speth said that JLR had planned 40 significant product actions in India over the next five years and these included new body derivatives, new engine derivatives, new chassis derivatives and totally new vehicles.
Carl-Peter Forster, MD & CEO, Tata Motors, said, “Tata Motors has made a huge step forward as a group in overall capability. Also, there are benefits for JLR by using what India has to offer and by using the engineering capabilities in India by tapping into the India-based community of engineering services”. The company is also looking at investing in research and development (R&D) in India and already has around 500 employees in R&D, Communications, IT and HRD.
The Pune facility will be overseen by two experienced manufacturing and quality managers who have moved to India from the U.K.
