CHENNAI: Strengthening India’s capabilities in premium vehicle manufacturing, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and its subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc (JLR) have inaugurated a new greenfield facility at Panapakkam in Tamil Nadu. Located about 80km from Chennai, the plant is expected to emerge as a key assembly hub for JLR, which currently assembles its vehicles at Tata Motors’ Pune unit from completely knocked-down (CKD) kits. Pune operations will continue alongside the new assembly line at Panapakkam. The new factory was inaugurated on Monday by Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin, who flagged off the first Range Rover Evoque from the plant. Tata Motors has committed a total investment of about Rs 9,000 crore in phases, with plans to scale up production capacity to 2.5 lakh units over the next five to seven years. The plant will manufacture vehicles, including electric models, for both Tata Passenger Vehicles and JLR, catering to domestic and global markets. “Over the next five years, we will bring other models and new technologies to this facility as we are building it afresh,” said N Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons. The project is expected to generate around 5,000 direct and indirect jobs and support a strong local supplier ecosystem’s development. JLR has underscored India’s strategic importance to its future growth. “India is a major focus growth market for us. Our ambition to grow brands such as Jaguar, Range Rover, Defender and Discovery in India is very strong, partly because of our parent company’s presence here and also because India is a large and rapidly growing economy,” Richard Molyneux, chief financial officer at Jaguar Land Rover, had indicated.