Tata Motors is looking at an additional facility for its light commercial vehicle ? Ace. The company may look at either a greenfield plant for the same or explore producing Ace family of products at its existing Dharwad plant in Karnataka.

Currently, Ace is produced at the Pantnagar plant in Uttarakhand, which has an installed capacity of 2.5 lakh units per annum. Meanwhile, the company also said it is setting up an assembly line in Johannesburg, South Africa, in collaboration with Tata Africa Holdings. This will be for its medium and heavy commercial vehicles.

PM Telang, managing director ? India operations, Tata Motors, said, ?There is a requirement and we want to meet the customer demand. There will be some expansion done at Pantnagar but at the same time, we will study the need for another plant.? He did not divulge details on the same. Tata Motors shares were down 2% to close at Rs 769.45 on the BSE on Friday.

On the other hand, R Ramakrishnan, head – sales and marketing, commercial vehicle business unit, Tata Motors, said that the company is ?examining the possibility of producing Ace out of its Dharwad plant.?

Tata Marcopolo Motors is a 51:49 joint venture of Tata Motors and Marcopolo of Brazil, and produces Marcopolo buses out of Dharwad. The plant has a capacity to produce 30,000 units a year, which the company plans to achieve in phases. It is doing around 700-800 buses per month. ?We have capacity to do twice amount at Dharwad and plan to increase it four-fold,? said Ramakrishnan.

Till recently, the Pantnagar plant was compromising on the production of Ace and Magic for Ratan N Tata?s dream project Nano. However, with the Nano?s mother plant up and running in Sanand in Gujarat now, it has freed up capacity of around 50,000 units for Ace family. However, as Ace and Magic have already achieved a 1.5 lakh unit sale together in 2009-10 and suffered a slight setback due to lowered production, there is a need for ramping up production in a bid to sustain market share.

“We are producing 15,000 Ace per month at Pantnagar plant now, which we plan to take up to 20,000 units per month in couple of months,” said Ramakrishnan.

Tata Motors will be launching two new Ace variants later this year. These include 0.5 tonne Ace and a higher horsepower DICOR run Ace. ?We created this segment with Ace and we will bring into the market more models from this platform,? said Telang. Today, there are a total of 5 lakh Ace vehicles on the road.

During the financial year, Tata Motors plans to sell 2.2 lakh units of light commercial vehicles. This will include 1.5 lakh units of Ace and around 70,000 units of Magic. Last year, it sold 1.1 lakh units of Ace and 48,000 units of Magic. Overall, the company is expecting a growth of 15% in commercial vehicle sales this financial year.

Talking on the company?s South Africa assembly plans, Telang said, ?We wanted to have a local presence there. There are duty benefits in South Africa and it is a growing market, which is coming out of recession. We need more local operations there.?