Renault-Nissan's plant in Chennai to operate 24 hours a day to meet demands for Kwid

The Renault-Nissan alliance plant in Chennai is all set to start a third shift this week onwards. The statement from the alliance said the Chennai plant will undertake a new night shift on one of its two production lines starting this week, which will effectively increase overall annual capacity.

The new development has been initiated primarily to meet the demands for the Kwid hatchback. The small car received over 1.05 lakh bookings and the company has only managed to deliver about 35,000 units so far. The arrival of the third car from Nissan's low cost brand Datsun adds to the burden. The new car is expected to be redi-Go and the launch is likely in the month of May.

"Increasing our production capability means we will be able to better meet the demands of our Indian and overseas customers by limiting waiting times on deliveries. On average we have launched two new models each year since the plant opened," Colin MacDonald, chief executive officer and managing director of Renault Nissan Automotive India Private Ltd (RNAIPL), said in the statement.

The Chennai plant of the alliance started its operations back in 2010. The facility has manufactured 12 models of Renault, Nissan and Datsun for the domestic market as well as export. With two shifts, Chennai plant currently rolls out 1,000 cars a day. Starting the third shift is expected to increase the per day output to 1,600 units. Currently, 80 percent of the production from the Oragadam plant is Renault products, while the rest of the production capacity is used by Nissan and Datsun.