The Hindu Business Line : Skoda aims to touch 40,000 mark in sales

SKODA Auto has set a sales target of around 40,000 cars by the fifth year but does not plan to launch another model until 2006 after the current crop of launches slated for this year.

The Skoda Auto India Chairman, Prof Karl-Guenter Buesching, told Business Line that by the fifth year, local content in Skoda models would go up to 60 per cent from 42 per cent currently. Currently, Skoda carries out CKD (completely knocked down) operations at its new plant in Aurangabad, which was inaugurated last week.

Skoda is also gearing up to make fresh investments in its Indian operations as most of the investments worth around $56 million, which was earmarked up to 2007, has nearly been exhausted. But Prof Buesching did not say how much investment the company will make in the next phase.

"I don't want to put the investments first and then watch the market (how it grows)," Prof Buesching said.

Skoda plans to move towards manufacturing the entire car in its plant in a phased manner, he said adding once the sales touches the 40,000-mark, a paint shop and a body shop will be set up.

It proposes to launch Laurent & Klement and Superb during the current year and Fabia in December this year or in January 2005. It has set a target of 10,000 cars during the year.

Prof Buesching said the Aurangabad plant will be the hub for Skoda auto. "We will expand our operations here slowly. But this plant will be the hub for all operations of Skoda in India," he said. The plant will be used as an export hub at a later stage.

The company was aware of the problems faced by its customers during servicing of the vehicles. "We are working very intensely to set right the problem," he said, adding more dealers will be appointed soon.

Currently, Skoda has 20 dealers and 14 satellite centres for sales and service operations spread across the country. The current marketing strategy was working well for the company. "We just need to keep fine tuning it a bit," he said.

Laurent & Klement, named after the owners of Skoda, is expected to be priced around Rs 13.5 lakh. Octavia is in the price range of Rs 10.6 lakh and Rs 12.3 lakh. Two more versions of Octavia will be launched around July this year. These include, an automatic diesel variant and a 1.8 lt turbo-petrol with 146 bhp.

The Superb will be launched in March. The high-end car will be positioned between the `C' and `E' class of Mercedes Benz and is expected to be priced around Rs 23 lakh.

Skoda plans to unveil a high-torque low emission "pumpe duse" (PD) diesel engine which gives increased mileage.

The fuel-efficient engine can give up to 26 km per litre. Some of the new models such as Superb will have the PD (unit injector) engines and compete with the common-rail direct injection (CRDi) engines popularised by Hyundai.