The Hindu Business Line : Tata Motors launches Novus tippers

TATA Motors announced the launch of the `Novus' range of heavy commercial vehicles on Wednesday. The range currently has `tippers' and would later include tractor-trailers and other application vehicles. The tippers come in 25-tonne and 49-tonne capacities and are priced between Rs 36 lakh and Rs 39 lakh.

The tippers would be manufactured at the company's facility at Jamshedpur. Speaking at the launch, the Tata Motors' Vice-President, Sales and Marketing - Commercial Vehicles, Mr Shyam Mani, said, "The facility has an installed capacity of 6,000 trucks a year."

Company officials declined to give the number of vehicles the company is targeting to sell in the next year, but said they were eyeing a significant share of the 25,000-30,000 tipper market in the country. The Novus currently has a 30 per cent localisation level, which is expected to go up to 60 per cent in the next one year.

The Tata Motors Managing Director, Mr Ravi Kant, meanwhile declined to mention the specific investment incurred on the new facility, saying that this was part of the ongoing Rs 6,000-crore capital expenditure programme of the company, which was spread over five years.

The vehicle has been co-developed by Tata Motors and Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicles, South Korea.

The company officials also said the company would double the production capacity of its .74-tonne goods carrier `Ace' to 60,000 units in the next two-three months. "We are planning to double the capacity of Ace as we venture into new locations across the country," said Mr Kant. The vehicle is only present in five Indian states. He declined to give the investment figures for the capacity expansion, saying it would not be very significant.

He added that as Tata Motors makes inroads into the quality-conscious global markets, the company would "shrink" the vendor base as part of a "strategy" to rationalise supplier chain.

"We are looking at shrinking our supplier base by filtering out low quality suppliers," Mr Kant said.

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