Daimler subsidiary, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) has opened its new EUR700m production plant in Oragadam in Chennai, India, to build BharatBenz trucks.
The new 160-hectare manufacturing plant includes an integrated research and development center and the test track.
Production of the BharatBenz heavy-duty trucks are scheduled to start in the third quarter of this year.
The new Chennai plant has an initial production capacity of 36,000 units a year and is designed to allow an increase up to more than 70,000 commercial vehicles per annum.
Daimler chairman of the board of management Dieter Zetsche said the company's new Oragadam-Chennai plant shares its stringent quality standards with its sister plants around the world and is unique at the same time.
"It is the only Daimler plant in the world that houses products which combine Indian engineering with German and Japanese DNA under a single roof," Zetsche said.
"This way, we are optimally positioning ourselves for one of the world's strongest and fastest-growing truck markets."
BharatBenz trucks currently accounts for 4% of all trucks in India and the company expects that by 2020 the figure is expected to rise to almost 80%.
