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Sudha Menon

Pune , July 8

THE country's rapidly growing commercial vehicle business is going to witness fresh action with Asia MotorWorks, a company promoted by a Kolkata-based family with interests in financial services and tea, firming up plans to launch large and medium commercial vehicles aimed at niche segments in the domestic market.

According to information available, the company is right now in the prototyping stage for a variety of commercial vehicles including tractors, tractor-trailers and tippers. The company has bought land and is in the process of setting up facilities for the manufacture of commercial vehicles at Kanaiyabe village in Gujarat's' Kutch district. Top company sources said there are plans to get into the market initially by leveraging the expertise of large component manufacturers from whom the company will source complete systems and assemble the vehicles. There are plans to initially get into the 16 and 25 tonnes segment with multi and single axle vehicles powered by 180 and 230 hp diesel engines. The company is targeting sales of a 50,000 units in the next two years.

A key member of the company's top management, based currently at Mumbai, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that work had started on the commercial vehicles foray. "We are definitely looking at heavy duty trucks and a few applications including steel since we have in-depth knowledge of the latter segment but a clear picture of our product profile will only emerge 3-5 months from now,'' the company official said.

"These are early days to talk about the project but we see an opportunity in the domestic trucking market and while we cannot take on established companies like Tata and Leyland, we can tap the opportunity by launching limited numbers of commercial vehicles for very niche markets,'' the official said.

"Our prototyping and testing stage will be over in six months from now,'' he added.

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