NEW DELHI, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd , India's biggest utility vehicles maker, will begin selling its products in Europe in December as part of a plan to nearly double exports in two years, a company official said.
P.N. Shah, Mahindra's vice-president for international business, told Reuters by telephone from Bombay the company would launch its vehicles in Italy in the first week of December during an international business exhibition.
They would later be introduced in Spain, Portugal and France and smaller countries like Serbia and Macedonia by its Italy-based distributor, Eurasia Motors.
"We want to focus on exports as part of our overall strategy. It will be our entire (utility vehicles) product line, Scropio, Bolero and its variants and the pick-up," Shah said.
Mahindra, which has a 46 percent share of India's utility vehicles market, sold 65,852 units in the past fiscal year to March. Its also exported 1,061 vehicles, including utility vehicles and light commercial vehicles.
"This year we plan to export much more than that and it will be 1,700 to 2,000 vehicles, in 2004/05," Shah said.
In June 2002, Mahindra launched the Scorpio, a sports utility vehicle it developed indigenously. The vehicle has been received well and its demand now outstrips its production capacity.
Mahindra makes only about 2,400 of these a month and is in the process of boosting output. Shah said the company will have to balance the needs of the domestic and export market.
Mahindra also has plans to assemble vehicles in Russia and Georgia and is obtaining regulatory clearances for the projects. ($1 = 45.32 rupees)