MG Group, India’s largest privately-owned bus building company, has announced a partnership with Scania India, the Sweden-based, Volkswagen-owned company for making premium buses.
Scania, which has been present in India since 2012, sells luxury buses which ply on inter-city routes. The MG Group partnership will be responsible for designing and manufacturing of coaches of premium buses for sale in India.
“Through this partnership with Scania we look forward to the opportunity of building world class coaches and buses for the dynamically evolving Indian market,” said Anil Kamat, Managing Director, MG Group. Production is slated to start at the beginning of 2018.
The Rs 500-crore turnover MG Group is also upgrading two of its plants based in Zaheerabad and Belgavi. Both plants have a combined capacity of 16,500 units a year. The group makes bus bodies for Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Eicher and Mahindra.
“We are setting up a capacity of 800 bus coaches to be produced from Belgavi in Karnataka for which we are making fresh investments,” added Kamat.
Further, the group showcased the Columbus, a low-floor bus used for shuttling passengers from the airport terminal to the aircraft. Kamat said that the group has found buyers for the bus and deliveries are set to begin in January next year.
The indigenously-designed Columbus is a 12-meter long, monocoque body bus having a capacity of 70 passengers. The bus currently comes with a diesel engine but can be tuned to run on CNG and electric powertrain, too.
“We have bagged orders from export markets like South East Asia for the Columbus. We will start with exports shortly,” added Kamat.
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