German luxury car maker BMW on Tuesday announced it has hiked production capacity at its Indian facility to 5,400 units per annum and will make a fresh investment of Rs 70 crore by 2012.
The company's wholly-owned subsidiary BMW India has a manufacturing facility in Chennai, which had an installed annual production capacity of 3000 units before the addition.
The company has so far invested Rs 110 crore (Rs 1.1 billion) at the plant.
"India is a market that holds great potential for the future for us and is a building block in our global market offensive," BMW AG board member Frank-Peter Arndt told reporters in New Delhi.
The company said that fresh investment of Rs 70 crore (Rs 700 million) will be for adding additional capacity over and above 5,400 units per annum but did not specify by how much it will go up by 2012.
BMW India is also planning to hike its manpower strength to 400 by the end of this year from 200 currently.
"At the same time as we are expanding capacity, we will also be gearing the plant to produce a further model, XI, for the Indian market, starting in November 2010 and thereby opening up new customer segment," Arndt said.
The company on Tuesday launched its new sports utility vehicle X5 in both petrol and diesel variants in India, priced between Rs 52.99 lakhs (Rs 5.29 million) and Rs 69.50 lakhs (Rs 6.95 million).
