Mercedes-Benz sharpens India focus

Peter Honegg, Managing Director & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India commented, “The luxury SUV is the fastest growing segment in the Indian automotive industry and the new M-Class is the leader in its category. The benefits of local production have been realised in the form of aggressive pricing, easier production availability and flexible production scheduling- each of these will benefit the discerning customers and ensure greater appeal of the M-Class in the high growth luxury SUV segment.”

 

Mercedes-Benz India also announced the start of operations of its state of art technologically advanced paint-shop located within its Chakan facility. The Paint Shop is capable of water based painting using highly sophisticated and environment friendly water based painting technology. The paint shop of Mercedes-Benz India is fully automated and maintains identical painting standards in line with stringent global standards of Daimler. The paint shop also boasts of sophisticated checking laboratories with the latest equipment. The automated selections of colors are enabled for robots and an online status of input and output offers flexibility and complete control in production sequencing.

 

Piyush Arora, Director, Technical, Mercedes-Benz India commented, “The new Paint Shop at Mercedes-Benz India Chakan facility now positions us as a global benchmark within Mercedes-Benz world. This underscores our bullish outlook for Indian market and we look forward to introducing more locally produced vehicles for the discerning Indian customers. The paint shop and the additional assembly lines will be the cornerstone in Mercedes-Benz’s product offensive for the foreseeable future.”

 

The paint shop has an annual capacity of 20,000 units which is extendable to 40,000 units annually. The level of refinement, implementation of advanced technology and flexible processes positions this amongst the most sophisticated in India. With an approximate total area of 17000 square meters, the new paint shop of Mercedes-Benz India was created within a record time of 16 months.