Gurugram: The country’s largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd is seeking a land parcel of around 700 acres in Haryana for shifting its Gurgaon plant, a top company official said. It was at the Gurgaon plant that the then Maruti Udyog Ltd began its India journey in 1983 by rolling out its first model, the legendary Maruti 800.
The company considers Haryana as its ‘mother state’ and will scout for another location in the state only, considering the presence of its supplier base. “Already, Manesar plant is spread across 700 acres so we are looking at a similar kind of land (for shifting Gurgaon plant),” Maruti Suzuki’s managing director and chief executive, Kenichi Ayukawa, told PTI.
Maruti Suzuki India’s reign in Gurgaon (now Gurugram), which dates back to the early 1980s, is an ode to India’s economic transformation. The rise of the people’s car – the Maruti 800 and the rise in the Indian middle class who can afford the car is the story of not just the company, but also the story of the nation’s middle class.
In the second half of 2018, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd began thinking of life beyond Gurugram. It had become far too cumbersome to continue manufacturing cars in the middle of a city which had turned into a bustling megapolis in the blink of an eye. Today, the Haryana government has offered new sites in Rohtak, Karnal, Faridabad and Dharuhera, among others, to Maruti Suzuki.
The company has not set any timeline for shifting the plant and the focus right now is to locate a good land parcel, Ayukawa told PTI.
If Maruti Suzuki decides to build its new car plant in Haryana, it is estimated to require an additional investment of about Rs 12,000 crore, according to reports. These would include the cost of procuring land and building four assembly lines capable of producing one million cars a year.
Besides Gurgaon, Maruti Suzuki has another car plant in Haryana at Manesar. Both Gurgaon and Manesar plants have a production capacity of 15.5 lakh units per annum. Its parent Suzuki Motor Corp. has also set up a facility in Gujarat. The first line with a capacity of 2.5 lakh units is in full production and the second one will be commissioned early next year.
Work has also started on the third line and the expected commissioning is early 2020. Maruti Suzuki is targeting annual production of 3 million units by 2025.