Car News in India

Franco-Japanese automotive joint venture Renault Nissan Automotive India Pvt. Ltd. (RNAIPL) will double its capacity by March and hire around 500 hands to take care of expanded capacities, an official said.

"We will add one more mass production line at our plant that would double the capacity to 400,000 units per annum. The doubling of production would need around 700 persons. We will deploy 200 of the existing workers and hire 500 afresh," said Koji Takei, senior vice president at RNAIPL.

He was speaking to reporters here on the sidelines of a seminar ‘Tamil Nadu State - Building Bridges for Business’ organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Japanese External Trade Organisation, Japan-India Business Cooperation Committee and Japanese chamber of Commerce and industry.

According to him, the company has two kinds of production lines - one an assembly line to make cars like Micra, Sunny (for Nissan Motor India) and Pulse (for Renault India) and the other is to assemble CKD (completely knocked down) units that are imported.

He said the plant rolled out around 75,000 units in 2010 and would double that this fiscal and would more than double the production figures of FY 12 the next fiscal.

He said the plant will start rolling out the new passenger vehicle Evalia for Nissan from August-September.

"The vehicle will have around 80-90 percent local component content," Takei said.