CNH India may boost tractor capacity in India to 100,000 units

CHN Industrial plans to boost its tractor manufacturing capacity in India by over 40% in two years to 100,000 units based on demand conditions, as the global agriculture and construction equipment company looks to strengthen its presence in the domestic market and boost exports.

“We currently have a capacity of 70,000 tractors. We have an expansion plan for 100,000 tractors. The way the market matures, we grow our business. We have a visibility of manufacturing 100,000 units in India,” said CNH India President and MD Narinder Mittal. On the timeline, he noted that it would be done in two years, subject to the demand in the industry.

CNH India manufactures and sells tractors under the New Holland brand. It also manufactures farm equipment as well construction equipment under the CASE brand. New Holland offers tractors ranging from 20 to 110 horsepower, besides harvesting solutions such as combine and sugarcane harvesters, crop residue management and farm mechanisation solutions.

The company has three manufacturing facilities in India – Noida, Pune and Pitampura. The Noida and Pune facilities make tractors while the Pitampura plant manufactures construction equipment like loaders, compactors and excavators. The Noida plant has an annual capacity of 60,000 tractors while the Pune facility can produce 10,000 units in a year.

“We are doing close to 50,000 tractors now, so we have capacity remaining. We have identified the areas where we need to work to expand the capacity. It is more of a debottlenecking required in the first step, and the second step would be the complete expansion of the plant,” he said.

Mittal said the company is likely to pursue a brownfield expansion at its Pune plant, citing available space for utilization. In Noida, the company could look at debottlenecking to expand the scale to some extent.

The potential expansion comes as CNH targets to double the market share of New Holland tractors in India to 8% from the current 4.1% by the end of the decade. Mittal noted that CNH would focus on improving New Holland’s brand awareness, expanding the network and creating a robust product line-up to drive a higher market share.

On Thursday, CNH started operations of its new engine plant at the Greater Noida facility that will make TREM V-compliant 2.8L engines to tractors and construction equipment with a capacity of 20,000 engines per year. The manufacturing of the 2.8L F28 engine was localised with an investment of $15 million.

Meanwhile, the company has also positioned India as the hub for its global business as it looks to manufacture for exports as well, while leveraging scale in the Indian market. Around 20% of the tractors manufactured in India are being exported to several countries. 

While CNH already exports to the US market, it plans to start exporting compact tractors to the US next year. The company has a partnership with South Korea’s LS to manufacture compact tractors and sees an incremental annual volume of 8,000–10,000 units of exports to the US.