Indian Truck Industry Hit by Shortage of BS-IV Parts

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India’s biggest truck manufacturer Tata Motors had to cut production by 50%; other brands also reduced manufacturing by up to 40%

Shortage of BS-IV compliant parts has hit the Indian truck industry badly. In April this year, country’s biggest truck manufacturer Tata Motors had to cut short production by 50%, while several other brands had to reduce the production by up to 40%. The main reason behind this is the shortage of massive shortage of BS-IV compliant fuel injection system that is solely supplied by German company Bosch.

Sales of medium and heavy trucks have been hit majorly in last month as the new stricter BS-IV emission norm has been applied from 1st April, 2017. Bosch says that the shortfall of its BS-IV compliant fuel injection system in India is 20% at present and normal supply won’t be restored before next month.

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Bosch says that the company didn’t expect sales of BS-III compliant vehicles would be stopped from 1st April. The stocks of BS-III vehicles were supposed to be cleared out and that is why the company didn’t imagine this shortfall would happen. As the demands of the BS-IV fuel injection system have grown massively within a short period of time, Bosch couldn’t meet the demand and hence the shortfall of parts struck the industry.

The German parts manufacturer heavily depends on its international production network and currently it is increasing the production capacity to meet the higher demand of the auto manufacturers in the country. The Indian truck industry is expected to suffer during the first quarter of FY18 due to this shortage of automotive parts.

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Tata Motors is hoping to see a revival of the truck production and sales in the next quarter and it hopes that its business will grow by 10% – 15% in this financial year. On the other hand, Bosch is focusing on localised production of components in order to prevent such shortage of parts in future. It will make the fuel injection parts at the Bidadi plant near Bengaluru.

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Source: ET Auto