Eying the number 3 slot in the Indian passenger vehicles space, Tata Motors has got its Sanand factory humming. Once functioning at only 20-25 per cent of its installed capacity, the plant is soon expected to touch a production volume of 10,000-12,000 cars per month across three models.
Within the current financial year (2017-18), the Sanand plant was expected to operate at its full capacity, said Mayank Pareek, president, passenger vehicle division of Tata Motors. Talking on the sidelines of the launch of the Tata Tigor compact sedan Pareek said that the Sanand plant produced around 60,000 vehicles last financial year, including Tiago hatchback and the mini car Nano.
"Plant capacity is a dynamic thing, it depends on what product and what variants are being produced. However, we plan to scale up the production to 10,000-12,000 units per month within the next few months, and expect that Sanand would function in full capacity within the current financial year," he said.
The company has already managed to ramp up its production capacity for the hatchback Tiago, which has been well received in the market from an initial 2,000 units per month to 6,000 units per month at the moment. The Nano production, however, is in the slow lane, and the company produced only 490 Nanos in February this year according to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).
Of late, Tata Motors has seen demand for its cars going up, registering an 84 per cent year-on-year growth in March this year, mainly on the back of the Hexa and Tiago. For the period between November and March last financial year, Pareek claimed that the company managed to grow its sales 2.5 to 3 times the market growth rate.
In fact, its has already managed to improve its market share in the passenger vehicles segment to 5.1 per cent in FY17 from 4.5 per cent in FY16. In FY18, it aims to claim the third slot in passenger vehicles from the current fifth position.
In fact, with Tigor, the company aims to attract buyers of both compact sedans and premium hatchbacks. Having priced it aggressively at Rs 4.7 lakh ex-showroom for the entry-level model, the company is now aiming at a much larger potential market of 90,000-100,000 units per month (compact sedans and hatchbacks combined).
Pareek informed that as part of the growth strategy, it also plans to grow its sales outlet numbers to 1,500 by 2019-20 from 700 outlets at present.