Volvo group unveils its bus body facility in Bangalore

Bangalore: Volvo Bus Corporation, a group company of the Swedish Volvo Group, has announced the inauguration of its newly built bus body production facility here on Thursday. The facility is a joint venture between Volvo Bus Corporation and Jaico Automobiles of Bangalore. Volvo Bus has 70 per cent stake in the join venture, which had made an initial investment of Rs 80 crore.

Volvo Bus Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the new joint venture, has also been identified as a sourcing hub for buses for South-East Asia, West Asia and African markets, said Mr Hakan Karlsson, President, Volvo Bus Corporation.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Mr Karlsson said, “with Asia’s commercial vehicles market growing at an exponential rate, we see VBT playing a central role in fuelling the company’s future growth across the region”.

Mr Akash Passey, Managing Director, VBT, said the new facility is set up on 11 acres of land adjacent to the current Volvo facility. The plant is expected to roll out 450 units this year and to realise its capacity of 1,000 units by 2010, said Mr Passey.

Volvo India, a wholly owned subsidiary of leading manufacturers of trucks, buses and construction equipment, had already been producing bus chassis in its Bangalore facility.

VBT will roll out a new version of Volvo 9400 inter-city buses in the first quarter of 2008 for the domestic and export markets. VBT hopes to achieve the full capacitor 1,000 buses by 2010, said Mr Passey. It will produce 450 buses this year.