Swedish truckmaker Scania AB revs up India plans

Swedish truckmaker Scania AB is finally taking the plunge in India. On Wednesday it announced the creation of Scania Commercial Vehicles India, which will look after sales of Scania’s heavy haulage trucks, city buses and long-distance coaches here.

In the next one year, the company also plans to set up an assembly plant near Bangalore for completely knocked down (CKD) kits.

Henrik Fagrenius, managing director, told DNA that Scania has been studying the Indian market for a long time and is already selling heavy tippers in association with Larsen & Toubro.

He said the assembly unit will come up within a year but declined to divulge the investment Scania has earmarked for Indian operations.

Meanwhile, Martin Lundstedt, executive vice-president in charge of Scania’s sales and marketing, said in a statement that “within the next five years, we expect to be able to achieve annual sales of almost 2,000 trucks, 1,000 buses and 1,500 engines.”

He said Scania, which is looking to broaden its offering to customers and during the second half of 2011, will provide a small number of buses and trucks for test operations to select Indian customers in additional segments.  “The potential exists in mining and construction segment, as well as trucks for heavy special-purpose road transport,” said Fagrenius.