Ifad to start auto assembly in Sep

Ifad Autos, which is building the country's largest auto assembly plant at Tk 90 crore, is expected to roll out its first vehicle in September.

Initially, the plant aimed to assemble 4,000 trucks and buses a year, but revised the annual target higher at 7,000 vehicles, buoyed by the growth of the local market.

“We expect to launch our first product in September this year,” said Taskeen Ahmed, managing director of Ifad Autos, a unit of Ifad Group that has presence from fast-moving consumer goods to agro-products and chemicals.

Primarily, the plant will assemble heavy buses and trucks of Ashok Leyland, a leading Indian automobile manufacturer.

Ifad, which was previously Ashok Leyland's sole distributor in Bangladesh for about three decades, is now its strategic partner in the country.

Ifad provides a full line of heavy duty trucks, buses and special service vehicles from Ashok Leyland of India.

Ashok Leyland is concentrated on heavy buses and trucks. It has presence in the entire truck range, starting from 7.5 tonnes to 49 tonnes.

Recently, the company has tied up with Nissan Motors of Japan to make light commercial vehicles or LCVs of less than 7.5 tonnes.

“We will also assemble and sell LCVs here,” said Ahmed, who is also the president of the India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

With the consistent economic growth of over 6 percent for the last one decade, Bangladesh is becoming an emerging market for the transport sector.

About 12,000 trucks of 3.5 tonnes to 7 tonnes are sold a year in Bangladesh, according to industry insiders.

In addition, several thousand pickups, which carry 1 to 2 tonnes of goods, are sold a year, they added.

Ashok Leyland and Tata dominate Bangladesh's commercial vehicle market, with 35 percent market share each.

In the bus segment, Ashok Leyland is the market leader in Bangladesh.

Until recent years, Japan-made LCVs dominated the market, but now the vehicles manufactured by Tata have become the market leader.

Ifad also aims to capture the body building market of all sorts of vehicles, from cars to LCVs and heavy vehicles of different brands.

“We will be able to make a body of a heavy bus or truck in just six days at our plant instead of several months presently required by others,” Ahmed told The Daily Star by phone yesterday. 

Starting out as a private enterprise in 1985, Ifad Autos has built a countrywide network with offices, dealers and showrooms.  The company came to Bangladesh's capital market in late 2014 to carry out its expansion plans, especially the state-of-the-art assembly plant in Bangladesh.