Chennai: Japanese automaker Nissan would begin exports of its latest sedan 'Sunny' in March, a top company official said today.
After foraying into Indian market through its completely-built units SUV X-Trail and Teana, Nissan in 2005 inked an agreement with France-automaker Renault to set up a manufacturing unit at an investment of Rs 4,500 crore spread over a period of seven years.
It currently manufactures cars Micra and Sunny from their facility at Oragadam near here which has a capacity of producing two lakh units.
After beginning exports of its first hatchback Micra, Nissan Motor India Managing Director and CEO Kiminobu Tokuyama today said they would be commencing exports of "Sunny".
"We will be exporting Sunny by March-end. Already we were exporting Micra to many countries. Initially, Sunny will be exported to Middle East market, Tokuyama told reporters here.
Currently, Nissan sold 25,000 units of Micra while the Sunny diesel version has got over 4,000 bookings so far, he said.
On their future plans, he said the company would also increase its capacity of the Chennai plant owing to increase in production. "Initially the plant's annual capacity is two lakh units. We will increase it to four lakh units by March..", he said.
Asked whether the company would be required to make additional investments, he said so far Nissan has invested Rs 2,800 Crore at the Chennai facility and this would be sufficient for the plant expansion.
On their line up of new products, Tokuyama said their latest Multi-Purpose Vehicle - Evalia would be introduced middle of this year. "This will be competing with Toyota Innova. We will be introducing it in middle of this year. This will be third product to be produced from the Chennai plant", he said.
About their plans to increase the localisation level of their products, Tokuyama said this year they would be increasing the total number of local suppliers to 150-160. "We are already having 116 suppliers.. this year we will be increasing them to 150-160..", he said adding currently the localisation level of their products was 85-90 per cent.
On the depreciation of rupee against Yen, he said the Indian currency was depreciating against all currencies globally and due to rising input costs they have increased the prices of the cars last week. "All we were doing is to absorb the rising costs. But last week we increased the costs..", he said.
Last week Nissan hiked the prices of its models Micra and Sunny between 0.56 per cent to 2.09 per cent to offset the impact of rising input cost and rupee depreciation.
Tokuyama who was here to inaugurate two of its dealers said they have planned to open 100 dealers by next year and aimed to sell one lakh units by 2013 end.
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