Ifad launches automated facility for commercial vehicle bodies

Aimed at manufacturing efficiency and precision, Ifad Autos added automated lines in its commercial vehicle body manufacturing facility at Dhamrai, Dhaka.

The unit for making luxury bus bodies, truck, pickup cabins under stringent quality control was inaugurated earlier this year and the automatic shaping and welding of metals was delayed due to the pandemic, said company officials.

The new machines would ensure perfectly even interfaces of the vehicle bodies, which the manual process of body making lacks, they added.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, during his visit to the facility, admired the localisation efforts by Ifad Autos, the local partner of India's commercial vehicle giant Ashok Leyland.

Photo: Mumit M/TBS

Ifad Group Chairman Iftekhar Ahmed Tipu told visiting reporters that local body making made Ashok Leyland's commercial vehicles more affordable in the market as it is saving foreign currencies.  

Local value addition now stands at over 25% in Ashok Leyland trucks and pickups, while the high quality body making raised it to up to 65% in the large buses category thanks to the company's investment of over Tk170 crore in the plants.

Not only bus bodies, the same precision and efficiency have been added in the making of truck and pickup cabins thanks to the automatic machines, said a plant executive while talking to this reporter and added that the company is looking to invest more in phases to take the production processes to the next level.  

Ifad Industrial Park, which was opened in 2017, started with the target to assemble 10,000-12,000 commercial vehicle units a year now has two major sheds—body manufacturing and vehicle assembling.

Ifad Chairman said that they had utilised up to over three-fourths of the capacity before the pandemic and the pandemic dragged the annual sales down to 6,000 units.

Now the integrated facility can deliver up to 25 large commercial vehicles a day if production runs at full swing.

"We can assemble a truck in 22 minutes in the automated facility that still needs a team of 29 expert technicians," said a top official of the company.

For body making and painting, it takes longer time and the company would invest more in that area for a faster production, he added.  

The pandemic dragged the average daily production to below 10 earlier this year and as soon as the economy started to pick up the number reached to around 12.

The commercial vehicle's annual market peaked in 2018 with over 37,000 units and it dipped to below 18,000 units last year as existing truck owners were struggling for their return on invested capital and businessmen were shaky to buy new trucks, according to senior Ifad officials.

However, as the economic activities are at full pace now, schools are open, commuting and traveling is back to normal, the demand for both the commercial passenger carriers and cargo vehicles is rising and Ifad is getting prepared to serve the market more after December.

The company is planning for international certification for its modern body making to secure a competitive edge over its traditional competitors that manually make vehicle bodies out of scrap metal and charge less.

Ifad is also going to add a covered van in its body making line soon as the market needs to get rid of the unnecessarily overweight covered van bodies built out of abandoned shipping containers.

Iftekhar Ahmed Tipu said his company is looking for more and more local procurement of widely used and available vehicle components with a target to nearly double the local value addition in cargo vehicles by next 3-4 years.

Ifad Motors, a sister concern of Ifad Autos, is investing in Chattogram for manufacturing at least seven automobile components initially, mostly the lowest hanging fruits like filters, various brackets and brake shoes.

He also has the ambition to build vehicle chassis in Bangladesh in near future, while the smaller market size is a hurdle towards that.

An anticipated local market demand boosted by the rapidly developing road infrastructure and a potential for export to the regional markets, especially to the north-eastern Indian states is conducive to his targets.