34 | AutoPartsAsia | AUGUST 2017brand. MG Group will build specific
application buses and coaches for
Scania.Scania, which is celebrating 126
years of global innovation, is a
leading manufacturer of premium
commercial vehicles - heavy trucks,
buses and coaches, as well as
industrial and marine engines. The
company offers world-class service
network and dealership in the
markets and sells a broad range of
service-related products and financial
services.
In India, the company has made
its presence felt in the mining and
construction segments since 2007
through its partnership with Larsen
& Toubro (L&T). In 2011, Scania
established the company, Scania
Commercial Vehicles India Pvt
Ltd., to strengthen its presence
in the segment for buses, trucks
and engines. Scania has two
manufacturing facilities in India - one
for trucks, and one for buses. The
company has more than 1,700 trucks
and over 600 buses registered in
the Indian market. It has a currentproduction capacity of 2,500 trucks
and 1,000 buses.
Social, environmental and economic
sustainability is at the core of
Scania’s offerings. All its vehicles
have the capability to run on alternate
fuels. The company has world-class
experience in mobility solutions,
which run on biofuels, and it has
brought this unique offer to India. The
Swedish company handed over the
first ethanol-run Green Bus in India
to the city of Nagpur in August 2014.
The company sees itself as a partner
to the Indian Government’s ambition
of building sustainable urban mobility
solutions for Smart Cities.Why MG Group
The strong and
compelling reason
for Scania to sign
a pact with the MG
Group was its design,
engineering and
product development
capabilities combined
with dynamic team
work and a proven
track record. “Scania
found us competitive
in terms of cost. We
will be designing,
from scratch, special
application buses and
coaches for Scania,
for which the IPRs will
be owned by us. The entire product
design is purely in MG’s scope
and we are going to come up with
revolutionary products for Scania,”
Kamat said.
The coaches to be built for Scania
may need some components specific
to the models, and for this MG Group
is working on developing suppliers.
“We are geared up for all platforms
but in this partnership we are looking
at Scania’s 12 metre and 14.8 metre
platforms,” he said.
The group is modifying its Belagavi
Plant -1 and creating an installed
capacity of 800 premium buses and
coaches a year. This unit will bededicated to the premium segment
of the market. “We hope to utilise 80
percent of our installed capacity by
the third year. This plant was earlier
called Alma Motors Pvt Ltd; we have
changed it to MG Automotives (Bus &
Coach) Pvt. Ltd. as we want to focus
on coaches also,” he said. This unit
will be dedicated to premium bus
and coach manufacturing, mostly for
European clientele and the Indian
customers interested in this segment.
Currently the Plant-1 makes all
varieties of buses for its OEM clients
in batch production and this will be
moved to a state-of-the-art dedicated
Plant-2, which is just next door.
As part of the expansion plan the
company will set up a separate
test track. After a coach is built, it
would be run for some time to see if
any issues crop up before handing
it over to the customer. Though
track testing is done by the OEMs
that manufacture the chassis, MG
Automotives (Bus & Coach) plans
to carry out field test on its track
to ascertain the quality post coach
building and address issues if any.
This will become one of our USPs in
the premium bus and coach industry,
Kamat said.Coach Building
Coach building is very different from
the mass production of economy
buses. The production of economyCOVER STORY
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