Ford India breaks new ground
Ford India broke ground for its newest manufacturing unit in the country, at Sanand (the newest auto hub in the country), near Ahmedabad in Gujarat today. The Sanand plant will be Ford's second plant in the country after the Chennai unit that has now been in operation for a decade and half. Construction of the state-of-the-art unit will commence soon, and it is expected to be up and running by late 2013, or early 2014. Ford is hoping to churn out 2.4 lakh vehicles and 2.7 lakh engines annually from the new plant, creating 5000 jobs in the process.
The plant is part of Ford's endeavour to expand operations globally, and Ford is hoping that the Sanand plant will help it achieve its objective of increasing its global sales by nearly 50 percent, to 8 million a year by 2015. Investment for the new plant is to the tune of USD 1 billion. The new plant will come up right next to the Tata Motors' plant which manufactures the Nano. With this new initiative, Ford's total investment in India is now up to USD 2 billion, which also includes their recent announcement of investing a further USD 72 million in the Chennai plant to expand its the powertrain facility.
Michael Boneham, President and MD, Ford India also took the opportunity to make the announcement that Ford India plans to launch as many as eight new cars in the next couple of years. Apart from that, Ford is also aggressively expanding its dealer and service network in the country and is hoping to have more than 200 sales and service outlets by the end of this year.
