On Wednesday, Murugesh R. Nirani, Minister of Karnataka Industry said, Japanese auto major Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) will invest an additional Rs.8 billion ($165 million) in its Indian joint venture with the Kirloskar group to expand capacity of its Bangalore plant and roll out a small car for the domestic market.

On the margin of a trade event Nirani said to the reporters, “'Toyota has agreed to invest an additional Rs.8 billion (Rs.800 crore) in the second phase of expansion. This will be over and above Rs.32 billion (Rs.3,200 crore) it has committed to invest in the project, which includes a second plant to manufacture small car for the Indian market”. 

As the joint venture was awaiting government approval and allocation of additional land at Bidadi, about 30 km from this tech hub, for its expansion plans, therefore an official at Toyota-Kirloskar Motor Ltd (TKML) confirmed the additional investment but declined to elaborate. 

Keeping aside the multi-utility vehicle Innova and mid-segment luxury car Corolla’s manufacturing, Toyota assembles its sedan in the first plant, which has a combined installed capacity of 100,000 units per annum. 

TKML, the decade old made a cumulative investment of Rs.17 billion (Rs.1700 crore) in the first phase. It invested Rs.12 billion (Rs.1200 crore) to set up the second plant for the small car project, with a production capacity of 65,000 units per annum in the second phase. 

Nirani said, “'subsequently, Toyota has increased the investment to Rs.32 billion for ramping up the installed capacity for existing models, transmission units (gear boxes) for its global plants and component manufacturing by ancillary units”. 

For the plants and ancillary units of Toyota the Indian subsidiary has 432 acres of land but it sought an additional 40 acres of land for locating more vendors and suppliers. 

In 1999, TKML had set up the first plant on the Bangalore-Mysore expressway to launch a multi-utility vehicle Qualis during the first five years of operations. In 2005 Qualis was phased out and Toyota introduced Innova. The Company also began the assembling of Prado, a sports utility vehicle. 

In the year 2006, the installed production capacity was boosted to 63,000 units per annum. Currently, it has about 2800 employs. 

TMC holds 89% of the equity with the rest 11% by the Pune-based Kirloskar group in TKML.

Best Selling Toyota Car Models:
Toyota Innova
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Corolla Altis
Toyota Camry
Toyota Alphard
Toyota Prado
Toyota Landcruiser
Toyota Lexus

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Posted by Naresh Koshti on 26 June, 2009 10:32:40 AM IST #