CNH Industrial, the $19.8 billion-revenue Italian-American agricultural and construction equipment major, plans to establish its second New Holland tractor manufacturing facility in India.
“It will be bigger than the plant that we already have here. Our aim is to double our market share in India over the next five years,” Gerrit Marx, global chief executive officer of the company, which also makes ‘Case IH’ sugarcane harvesters and ‘CASE’ construction equipment, told presspersons.
CNH’s existing plant at a 60-acre plot in Greater Noida (Uttar Pradesh) has a capacity to produce 60,000 tractors annually, which can go up to 70,000. “We are looking at a site that has more land and will allow us to set up a bigger facility,” Marx said without divulging further details.
In 2024, CNH manufactured about 51,000 tractors from the Greater Noida plant, out of which 37,000 was sold domestically and the balance 14,000 exported to the US, Europe and other overseas markets.
“New Holland has a very small share of the domestic tractor market of nearly 900,000 units. We want that to at least reach double-digits by 2030. In sugarcane harvesters and small square balers, we are already market leader with 60 per cent share each” Marx said.
On Tuesday, CNH unveiled its first “made-in-India” compact four-wheel drive tractors in the 35-55 horsepower range from its Greater Noida plant. These tractors are for exporting to the European and North American markets.
CNH, Marx said, is positioning India as a manufacturing and innovation hub for both the domestic and global market. “India was earlier treated as part of Asia-Pacific and not being given sufficient priority. But now, we are looking at leveraging the country’s strong supplier ecosystem, cost advantages and skilled workforce to deliver globally competitive products along with serving domestic needs”.
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CNH’s India business generates annual revenues of about $one billion, out of which 65 per cent is from agriculture, 32 per cent from construction equipment and 3 per cent from financial services. Apart from the Greater Noida tractor plant, the company has a combine harvester unit at Pune, a backhoe loader and other construction equipment at Pithampur (Madhya Pradesh), and a technology-cum-product development centre at Gurugram.
