At the end of the 2013 business year, the Stuttgart-based MAHLE Group acquired all of the shares in its former joint venture company MAHLE IPL Limited. MAHLE had already been a majority partner in the joint venture with a share of about 60 percent.
Prof. Dr. Heinz Junker, Chairman of the Management Board of the MAHLE Group and CEO, comments: “In recent months, we have been able to secure important high-volume orders from major international customers, and therefore we wanted to have full independence in our future investment decisions and the transfer of technology. That’s why we took this step at this point in time. In 2013, economic activity in the Indian automotive industry was indeed very sluggish, but in the long term, we believe India has sustainable growth potential.”
The piston plant, which is located in Chennai in southern India, generated sales of approximately 15 million euros in 2013. MAHLE also operates MAHLE Engine Components India Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary in Pithampur/India, and is a majority shareholder in the joint venture MAHLE Filter Systems (India) Limited and Behr India Limited.
Furthermore, MAHLE operates a development and engineering service center in Pune with about 350 employees, which mainly supports the Group’s German and North American development centers.
MAHLE has a local presence in all major world markets. In 2014, some 65,000 employees at 140 production locations are expected to generate sales of around ten billion euros. At ten major research and development centers in Germany, Great Britain, the USA, Brazil, Japan, China, and India, more than 4,000 development engineers and technicians are working on forward-looking concepts, products, and systems.
