Jaguar and Land Rover, a Tata’s company from UK has started its Indian operation from May 27th 2011 in India. Some of the JLR cars which were earlier being imported as a CBU (completely built unit) will not come as CKD (completely knocked down) units and will attract much lesser import duties now. The new assembly plant of JLR has been opened up in Pune and will start with Freelander 2 Assembly in India. Later on more models are expected to be assembled in India based on the sales volume of these models in India. There are news of a JLR Engine Assembling plant coming up in India which will further make the JLR cars cheaper in India.
With the local assembly operations, there will be duty savings which Tata has passed to the customers by dropping the prices of the Freelander 2 in India. Earlier the Freelander 2 was priced at Rs. 38.59 Lakhs Ex-showroom for TD4 SE Automatic and Rs. 44.36 Lakhs Ex-showroom for SD4 HSE with Automatic transmission. These cars now cost Rs. 33.89 Lakhs and Rs. 40 Lakhs Ex-showroom after the local assembling operations started in India. This will ease the buyers of about Rs. 4.5 lakhs which is a huge drop of about 14% on the previous prices.
On this occasion, Carl-Peter Forster, MD and CEO of Tata Motors quoted:
Today marks a significant step in our growth strategy for the Indian market. The opening of this plant demonstrates close co-operation between the parent company TATA Motors and Jaguar Land Rover and we are keen to develop this further.
To manage and run this assembly plant, some of the experienced Managers and skilled staff will be transferred from JLR UK to India plant to ensure high quality and smooth production. The plant will also be manufacturing more models in coming years 5 years.
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