MG Motor India will make an additional investment of Rs 500 crore on localising important components and developing vendors. Recently, the Company had revealed its intention to invest Rs 1,000 crore to increase the capacity of its plant at Halol, in Gujarat. The objective is to increase the plant’s capacity from 75,000 units to 1,00,000 units a year. Alongside, MG now plans to step up hiring too, at the Halol plant as well as its corporate office in Gurugram.
With a current workforce of around 2,500 direct and indirect employees at Halol and Gurugram, the Company is looking to produce 50,000 units in 2021. It is also working on certain new products, including a compact SUV, which will be launched this year. The year 2020 saw the Company producing about 28,000 units.
It has just launched the Hector facelift 7-seater version at a starting price of Rs 13.34 lakh. It will soon begin to export its models in the neighbouring markets, including Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan, along with some markets that follow right-hand driving.
In July last year, MG Motor had to temporarily stop taking bookings for its Hector SUV when the quota planned for the year was sold out. In October 2020, the Company had revealed having invested Rs 2,000 crore in its plant and the fact that it had begun the process of hiring 500 additional workers, when it had introduced a second shift at Halol. At the time, the step was taken to help fulfil the spurt in demand for Hector SUV. It was a surprising move at the time considering that the automobile industry in the country was going through a tough phase, with layoffs being resorted to by many auto manufacturers.
However, things soon began to look up and the Company started a second shift a month later.