Maruti Suzuki to develop vendor park in Gujarat

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Country's biggest passenger carmaker Maruti Suzuki will develop a vendor park for its proposed greenfield manufacturing facility at Mehsana in Gujarat, a company official on Friday said.

"We will develop the vendor park on our land in Gujarat for the plant," Maruti Suzuki managing executive officer (Production) M.M. Singh said.

The company had expressed its intention to set up a new plant in Gujarat in view of the infrastructure congestion at Gurgaon, where the company had set up its first plant.

He said the first phase of the plant would come up on 600 acres of land provided by the Gujarat government.

"We hope to sign an agreement with the Gujarat government by June," Singh told reporters at the launch of its multi-utility vehicle (MUV) Ertiga here on Friday.

The second phase would come up on another 600 acres to be purchased by the company. Singh said Gurgaon would continue to assemble cars but at a lower volume.

About Manesar, he said, that the third plant there would take the capacity from 12.5 lakh per annum to 15 lakh per annum by the middle of next year. With the industry growing at around 10 per cent per annum, the capacity of the Gujarat plant is yet to be chalked out.

With the launch of Ertiga, Maruti has entered the MUV segment pitting it against Toyota's Innova and Mahindra's Xylo.

Ertiga would also be exported to Indonesia and other Asian nations in Completely Knocked Down (CKD) form.