Mahindra Tractors, a division of the $6 billion Mahindra Group, plans to acquire foreign and domestic companies to outdo competition and gain a larger market share, a company official indicated.

Recently, the company bought domestic rival Punjab Tractors Ltd (PTL) for further consolidating and strengthening its position in the country.The firms will together have a market share of more than 40%. This is in line with Mahindra Tractors’ objective to attain a leadership position in the tractor segment by 2009 from being the current fourth worldwide.

M&M has identified a number of new markets abroad for business development and is scouting for the right partner, the official said.

Currently, the company?s tractors have a presence in the United States of America (USA), Australia, Chile, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Iran, Syria and Africa.

?We are looking at markets like the Middle East, Latin America and Africa for expansion,? the official added. Few of the new markets that the company has identified include Romania, Bulgaria, Brazil, Argentina, among others.

The company has one tractor manufacturing plant in China, three assembly plants in the United States and one at Brisbane, Australia.

M&M has witnessed a significant 16% rise in tractor exports this November. The export figures for the month of November this year stood at 536 units as against 464 during the same period last year.

Domestic sales volume for November this year inched up to 7,530 units from 7523 for the same period last year. The company posted cumulative (April ? November) sales volumes of 68,770 tractors in FY08 including exports, as against 72,294 in FY07 in the same period last year.

Explaining that the entry of foreign tractor players like John Deere (JD), New Hampshire (NH) and SAME International into India, which were seen as a threat by existing Indian players, the official said that the homegrown companies during a course of time realised that these companies were using India as a transit point to export tractors to the South Asian markets.

M&M tractors range between 25 to 80 horse power (Hp) and the company has no plans to up the power than the existing citing the needs of the Indian farmers.