Fiat-owned Magneti Marelli opens new plant for AMT

Magneti Marelli, the Italian auto component major, officially inaugurated its new plant for manufacturing AMT (automated manual transmission) in Manesar. This the 11th plant of Magneti Marelli in India.

The new plant, situated on an area of 7,500 square metres, has a maximum capacity of 280,000 units in a year. The plant has already started manufacturing of AMT in July and is currently producing 120,000 units annually.

"This facility has been created to address the growing market success that the AMT component has had in India over the past two years and to meet the demand from local carmakers regarding additional future implementations," the company said in a statement.Currently Magneti Marelli supplies its AMT solution to Maruti Suzuki for the Celerio and the Alto K10, and Tata Motors for the Zest and the Nano.The company said it has invested INR 150 crore in the manufacturing of the new plant. When fully operational, the plant is expected to employ around 115 people. Magneti Marelli, across all its plants in India, employs around 2300 people.Till now, Magneti Marelli was importing AMT from its plant in Italy. However, the company said it will continue importing AMT's from its Italy plant to meet the demand in Indian market.

Magneti Marelli informed that at present, 4 to 5 percent of the passenger vehicle market in India has automatic transmission solutions, more than 50 percent of which is AMT. "We expect the overall automatic solution market to shoot up to 30 percent by 2020," he said.Magneti Marelli hassold more than 50,000 units of AMT in 2014. Even with the current utilisation, the plant is manufacturing almost double the units it has sold in India last year.

The company has said that it will double its revenues from India in the next three years and hopes the AMT segment to be one of the main contributors towards this.
 

Source : MotorOctane