MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Indian tractor manufacturer plans to mount assembly plant in Argentina

India’s manufacturer of International Tractors (Sonalika brand) is in advanced negotiations with Argentina-based company Apache for the establishment of a 25 million US dollars assembly plant in the South American country as part of a regional campaign.

Sonalika group chairman LD Mittal is quoted by the Indian news agency TOI: ”Sonalika is in negotiations with a number of international companies and Apache is one of them. We are looking at locally assembling our tractors in a number of Latin American destinations including Argentina and our talks with Apache regard such collaboration”.

Sonalika group is among the top four tractor companies in India which is dominated by Mahindra & Mahindra. Recently it announced its entry into the Eastern European market with the launch of the Solis series of tractors in Serbia.

The Indian group is present in over 65 countries and claims a distribution network of over 1,800 dealers.

ITL officials said the company has an aggressive expansion plan over the next couple of years including a new plant in India and assembly operations abroad. The group is setting up a new plant in Bihar with production capacity of 20,000 units a year.

The group will invest in increasing capacity at its existing plans and the target is to hit a million units a year from the current 60,000 units.