Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) is celebrating an important milestone in its export business. In less than four years after it began exporting, the 10,000th export vehicle rolled onto a ship at Kamarajar Port, near Chennai. The milestone vehicle, a Mercedes-Benz 40-tonne heavy- duty tractor was for a customer in Indonesia. It is part of a batch of about 250 trucks, on the way to various South East Asia markets. According to Marc Llistosella, President and CEO of MFTBC and Head of Daimler Trucks Asia, the milestone of attaining 10,000 trucks in exports is only a beginning for the company. DICV is additionally leveraging the potential in growth markets with reliable, efficient high-quality trucks built at its India manufacturing plant. “There will be continuous significant growth in this business for our FUSO and Mercedes-Benz brands, ” averred Llistosella. DICV’s export product range, manufactured on the same production lines as its domestic BharatBenz portfolio, features the medium-duty range (9-16 tonne) and heavy-duty range (16-49 tonne) of trucks. The target markets in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America are being looked upon as significant growth opportunities for DICV. Expressed Erich Nesselhauf, Managing Director and CEO, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles that the exports business was developing extremely well. “Since the launch in 2013, we have doubled our figures each year, and we aim for further significant growth as we will expand to serve more than 40 markets on three continents by the end of the year, ” averred Nesselhauf. Over and above the completely built trucks, DICV has also exported more than 1,000 bus chassis, produced at its bus plant, and is currently ramping up volumes of its Mercedes-Benz school bus, launched in the Middle East. The company has also been supplying FUSO truck CKD kits to Kenya for local assembly, by a FUSO partner in Kenya, since March 2016, and to Daimler Truck’s production plant in East London and South Africa. In case of the latter, the local assembly operations only recently commenced in May 2017.
