Mahindra May Build Canada Farm Tractor Site

[HayDR]

All of the press release below is old news to Mahindra dealers but this is a public release and I thought the TBN public would be interested.


TOMBALL, Texas February 27 (SNS) Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., a manufacturer of farm tractors and sport utility-type vehicles, reported it still may build a new farm tractor-making site in Canada to build more than 10,000 units a year.

A spokesman for the company said additional details on the pending site could be disclosed next year around the time the firm would launch its first previously disclosed sport utility-type vehicles in the U.S. market. Mahindra did not disclose the planned location for the Canada farm tractor manufacturing plant third of its kind in North America.

Mahindra already builds a range of low-cost, compact and dairy-type, 2WD farm tractors at two facilities in Georgia and Texas. The vehicles are imported from India in kit form and sub-assembled in the U.S. with local content, such as tries, batteries, etc. It also sources nearly 500 units of farm tractors per year from a firm in California via an assembly and distribution agreement.

It manufactured 8,650 units of 2WD farm tractors last year at Tomball, Texas, and Calhoun, Ga., a nearly 30% increase from 6,665 units in 2003. The existing sites are capacitized to build 16,000 units annually.

Mahindra's U.S. unit president also confirmed around the same time the company is targeting a 10% share of the U.S. and Canadian market for low horsepower farm tractors by 2008, more than double the firm's current market share. Sales by 2008 are targeted at 17,000 units.

The firm possessed at the time a network of 217 dealers in the U.S., most in the southern and southeast. It plans to add 70 new dealers to the network each year, to accommodate its higher sales penetration of 17,000 units by 2008, he added.

Mahindra also disclosed plans to use its China farm tractor assembly venture, Jiangling Tractors, as a source of low-cost farm tractor supply for export to the United States.

As reported, a source disclosed four years ago the firm was developing a 120-hp, low-cost farm tractor and might enter the low end of the U.S. row crop-type, two-wheel-drive farm tractor business in 2006.

Source: British Digby, Starks News Service

 

[Harold_J]

All of the press release below is old news to Mahindra dealers but this is a public release and I thought the TBN public would be interested

...Mahindra already builds a range of low-cost, compact and dairy-type, 2WD farm tractors at two facilities in Georgia and Texas. The vehicles are imported from India in kit form and sub-assembled in the U.S. with local content, such as tries, batteries, etc. It also sources nearly 500 units of farm tractors per year from a firm in California via an assembly and distribution agreement...

The fact about doing sub-assembly in the U.S. makes me smile but also be concerned.

About 10-12 years ago I worked with some men and women from India here in the U.S. They were mainly engineering/computer technology types here on work visas. We would talk about many subjects: U.S. economy, Indian economy, things happening in the world, etc.

I asked them if India was encouraging foreign investment and foreign-owned factories. They told me definitely yes, but that India usually wouldn't allow foreign owned facilities that only made use of what they called "screwdriver technology", ie. just screwing or wrenching components together that were made someplace else.

Well, look where we're at today in 2008. It's apparent we're doing the low-priced "screwdriver technology" right here in the southern U.S.A. Deere, CNH, Mahindra and most auto manufacturers are all doing it; bringing in the expensive manufactured components and our citizens screw them together at relatively lower paying jobs. But we and our government let it happen and now with the weakening dollar we will have to claw our way back.

Ford discontinued manufacturing what were generally agreed to be pretty good tractors and farm machinery here in the US and England and instead bought big shares in Jaguar, Volvo, etc.

Maybe they wish they were in the tractor business today instead of trying to unload Jaguar to Mahindra or whomever. I for one, and probalby a lot of other posters here wish that were the case.