PressClub South Africa · Article.
MINI expands its international production network: Assembly begins at the Chennai plant in India.
Wed Apr 17 10:00:00 CEST 2013 Press Release
Successful MINI Countryman to be produced outside Europe for the first time – Assembly of vehicle at BMW’s Chennai plant will meet the BMW Group’s most exacting quality standards – Expansion of the international production network responds to growing demand for MINI cars.
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Edward Makwana
BMW Group
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Author.
Edward Makwana
BMW Group
Munich. In response to increasing worldwide demand
for premium cars from the British MINI brand, the BMW Group is
extending its international production network by additional assembly
plants for select MINI models. This adds another chapter to the global
success story of MINI. For the first time since the relaunch of the
brand in 2001, preparations are under way for the assembly of MINI
cars for several growth markets outside Europe. As a result, cars from
the British premium brand will be rolling off assembly lines beyond
Europe for the first time later this year. Final assembly of vehicle
sets for the MINI Countryman is currently being prepared at the BMW
plant in Chennai (formerly Madras), which meets the same stringent
quality standards applied to all production of BMW Group models.
The new MINI assembly facility has been brought on stream just a
year after the start of MINI sales in India and will help to meet the
steadily increasing demand for MINI cars in the Indian market. The
British small car manufacturer has a record of assembling vehicle kits
in countries beyond its regular production bases. Indeed, the classic
Mini was put together in a dozen countries in Europe, as well as
further afield, for direct delivery to local customers.
The first models to be assembled in Chennai will be the MINI
Cooper D Countryman and the MINI One Countryman. A large proportion of
the components for production of the MINI Countryman – 250,000 units
of which have already been sold worldwide and more than 1,800 in South
Africa since 2010 – outside Europe will be manufactured by MINI’s
production and development partner Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria.
MINI’s native Britain will contribute the cars’ engines, which are
built at the Hams Hall plant near Birmingham. Parts and components
will be packed into vehicle sets in precisely arranged assembly stages
before being shipped to India. The sets will then be completed with
locally produced parts at the BMW plant near Chennai, where final
assembly will take place.
Over recent times India has become an increasingly significant
market for the BMW Group, which has operated its own sales company on
the subcontinent since 2007. At the start of 2012, MINI opened its
first five showrooms for cars from the British brand in Delhi, Mumbai,
Hyderabad and Bangalore, making India the 100th market in the global
MINI sales network. A total of 302 cars were sold here in between
March and December 2012.
The BMW Group’s decision – in line with its “production follows
the market” strategy – to carry out assembly of the MINI Countryman in
India responds to the burgeoning interest within the country in
innovative and high-quality vehicle concepts. MINI is the first
premium manufacturer to be represented in the locally ultra-important
small car segment, and is expecting the Indian car market as a whole
to experience high growth rates over the medium and long term.
BMW’s Chennai production plant was built in March 2007 and has
since taken on production of the BMW 3 Series and BMW 5 Series as well
as the BMW X1 and BMW X3 models. The facility, which has a production
area covering around 13,000 square metres, is locaed in the Mahindra
World City business zone in the southwest of India, roughly 40
kilometres northwest of Chennai. State-of-the-art machine technology,
highly skilled employees and advanced manufacturing processes provide
all the necessary ingredients for the production of premium cars to
the highest quality standards.
Expansion of the international production
network.
The ramping up of international production
capacity is primarily aimed at providing a rapid and flexible supply
line to the increasing number of customers in emerging markets. MINI
delivered a record 301, 526 vehicles to customers worldwide in 2012,
with markets on the American and Asian continents making a
particularly strong contribution to this 5.8 per cent increase in
sales over the previous year. The MINI brand will continue to broaden
its global perspective over the coming years, and the strengthening of
its international production network is intended to assist in that process.
Five of the seven models in the current MINI line-up are
produced in the brand’s native Britain. The MINI plant in Oxford
represents the central pillar in the BMW Group’s British production
network, which also includes the Hams Hall engine factory in
Birmingham and the press shop in Swindon. The MINI Countryman and MINI
Paceman, meanwhile, roll off the assembly line at MINI’s production
and development partner Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria and are also
supplied with engines from Hams Hall.
The BMW Group is investing heavily in the expansion and
modernisation of the three locations that make up the MINI production
triangle in Britain. Among the factors behind the move is the planned
next stage in the expansion of the MINI model family, which will
further bolster the brand’s global success. Added to which, the
components required for assembly abroad will be manufactured at the
central production locations in Britain and Austria. These parts will
then be arranged into vehicle kits and shipped to the relevant plants
for final assembly. It is a strategy which also helped the classic
Mini on its triumphant march around the world. The one-off small car –
more than 5.3 million units of which were sold between 1959 and 2000 –
was also exported in kit form to various regions around the world.
Which explains how the classic Mini was not only “made in Britain”,
but also in Spain, Belgium, Italy, Malta, Portugal, former Yugoslavia,
Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.