Category: 3. Business

What is happening with Heathrow’s proposed third runway?

The government has put big infrastructure at the heart of its strategy to kickstart economic growth – particularly if paid for through private investment – and has vowed to make building easier. Few projects come as big, or at such an advanced stage of planning, as Heathrow’s expansion. With record numbers of passengers, Europe’s busiest airport is at capacity, and it has new owners with deep pockets who see an opportunity to invest.

Didn’t it already get permission to build a runway – what happened?

Yes, more than once. The Conservatives overturned Heathrow’s original plan, which was approved by Labour in 2009, before setting up an independent airports commission, which found a new runway was needed. The plans were endorsed by the government and voted through parliament in 2018, and were eventually upheld by the courts. But then Covid happened, passengers disappeared, and Heathrow never submitted a full planning application.

So are these new plans?

They are fundamentally the same as last time, but Heathrow now believes it can pack in even more flights and passengers – up to 150 million a year – due to bigger planes and operational advances. It will cost more too because of inflation: £21bn for the runway; another £12bn to expand its terminals; and a further £15bn to upgrade the rest of the airport to match.

Will the runway still go over the M25?

Part of the engineering challenge is getting a runway over Britain’s busiest motorway, the M25 orbiting London, at one of its most congested points. At a cost of £1.5bn, Heathrow plans to build a new stretch of M25 further west, with the runway going over the top, ready for cars to be switched overnight and allow it to complete the rest of the two-mile strip. It believes this is still better value and more efficient than situating the runway further to the east, which would mean demolishing more houses and putting much more of west London under noisy flightpaths.

What happens next?

The government is officially reviewing the plan, as well as an alternative proposal submitted by the Arora group, alongside the existing airports national policy statement, to “ensure that any scheme is delivered in line with our legal, environmental and climate obligations”.

A response is expected in early autumn and, if green-lit, Heathrow could launch a formal public consultation before submitting a full planning application. However, its new owners, which include Saudi Arabia and Qatar, want to be sure that the legal and political context has shifted enough for its near-£50bn investment plans to come to fruition.

That means passing the planning bill, so the runway is not blocked by neither bat, newt, nor judicial review. It also hopes for progress on airspace modernisation, to ensure the additional 750 planes a day can fly over London as required; and most of all, guarantees that the Civil Aviation Authority will let Heathrow charge airlines enough to recoup its investment.

What about net zero?

What indeed. The airports commission view a decade ago was that a third Heathrow runway could be compatible with the UK’s climate commitments, so long as other aviation growth was constrained. However, airports around the UK are also now looking to expand, not least Heathrow’s London rivals. Stansted’s growth was enthusiastically endorsed at an early Labour “growth summit” and the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, has given the green light to plans to double the size of Luton airport. She has also said she was minded to approve Gatwick’s second runway plans, with a decision expected soon.

What’s the good news?

Tens of thousands of jobs created, economic growth, and competition, cheaper fares and new destinations for passengers flying from Heathrow.

And the bad?

Another 276,000 flights a year overhead, adding to noise and air pollution. Locally, 750 homes bulldozed, and years of disruption in construction for the rest. And an estimated extra 4.4m tonnes of CO₂ a year from resulting flights, contributing to the climate emergency.

TOKYO: Nippon Steel, Japan’s biggest steelmaker, posted 195.83 billion yen ($1.30 billion) in losses for the three months to June 30, it said on Friday, wider than analysts’ expectations.

An LSEG poll of analysts had expected Nippon Steel to post 25.7 billion yen in quarterly losses.

A year earlier, Nippon Steel saw a quarterly net profit of 157.56 billion yen.

For the fiscal year as a whole, Nippon Steel forecasts a loss of 40 billion yen, it said.

In June, Nippon Steel closed its $14.9 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel after an 18-month struggle to obtain U.S. government approval for the deal, which faced scrutiny due to national security concerns.

Jerome Niddam replaces Cecile Bartenieff who has been appointed Head of Mobility and International Retail Banking & Financial Services. This appointment will be effective 1 September 2025 and is subject to the approval of regulatory authorities. 

Anne-Christine Champion and Alexandre Fleury commented: “The Asia-Pacific region plays a key role in Societe Generale group’s growth strategy. Thanks to our global reach, we provide access to and from this dynamic region to corporate and financial institutions, while enhancing our local offerings. Jerome’s recognised expertise, combined with his deep knowledge of the Asia-Pacific market and our activities, will enable him to execute our ambitious roadmap and accelerate the development of our franchise.” 

Press contacts: 

Paris: Benjamin Fayol _+33 1 42 13 08 11_ benjamin.fayol@socgen.com 

Hong Kong: Geraldine Bayon + 852 2166 4204_ geraldine.bayon@socgen.com 

Biography 

Jerome joined Societe Generale Paris in 2004 as a Financial Engineer in the Equity Derivatives Department. He transferred to New York in 2006, before taking up the post of Head of Financial Engineering for Japan in 2008. In 2011, he was appointed Head of Pricing and New Products for Cross Asset Solutions, Asia Pacific, and then Head of Financial Engineering, Global Markets, Asia Pacific in 2015. Jerome was previously Head of Global Markets in Asia Pacific since 2018. Jerome graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne, and holds a Master’s degree in Actuarial Science from the Institut de Science Financière et d’Assurances (ISFA) as well as a Master’s degree in Probability & Finance from Paris VI University / Ecole Polytechnique.

NextGen Auto Pvt., a unit of Pakistan’s Nishat Group, plans to debut five cars simultaneously under Chery’s Omoda and Jaecoo brands at a launch event on Friday, Muhammad Aqib Zulfiqar, the group’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. The conglomerate has earmarked about $100 million for the automotive manufacturing and marketing operations, with local car assembling set to start in October, he said. 

With the wind howling and the temperatures dropping, it’s not exactly a good day for a walk. The few who have ventured out into the dismal grey of the Dutch North Sea coast are rewarded with the sudden appearance of the Porsche 356 A Coupé in Porcelain White, its characteristic sound filling the air. The classic car heads down Korenmarkt in Hoorn, a small town north of Amsterdam, and comes to a stop at one of the many canals that rival even those in the famous capital city. No sooner has Henk Spin turned off the engine than passersby are pulling out their smartphones. A 356, especially one in this condition, is a rare sight here, too. But no one here realizes that this sports car, in particular, is not only extremely rare, but also one of a kind.

A Porsche one-off full of special requests

By the look on his face, the 65-year-old retired manager in the aviation industry loves nothing more than to take his classic car out of the garage for an unadulterated driving experience. After all, this 356 is a piece of history on wheels, a one-off full of special requests from a time when there was no official department for those at Porsche. And for Spin, the car represents one thing above all else: time well spent. Over a period of ten years, the Dutchman invested more than 3,000 hours in restoring the vehicle in his workshop, though that wasn’t initially the plan. “I bought the car because I was looking for a classic 356 from the 1950s as a restoration project,” says Henk Spin. “But when I started the work, I noticed a few things about the car were different than they were supposed to be.”

To figure out what was going on, Spin went to Stuttgart in 2008 to explore the Porsche company’s archive – and with the help of experts there, found an important clue. “On the original documents produced by Reutter, the vehicle body builder, there was something written in shorthand that no one could initially read.” Fortunately, Spin’s sister-in-law had studied stenography at school and was able to make out: “Reinhard Schmidt, Hannover.” The experts in Stuttgart promptly explained to Spin what that meant: this 356 is one of eight so-called Schmidt cars – all of them one-off vehicles – built by Porsche in the 1950s and 1960s on behalf of Reinhard Schmidt, with a list of special requests that defied all conventions. For Spin, the visit to the archive started an adventure that would fascinate him for years.

Who was Reinhard Schmidt?

And why does the mere mention of his name in official vehicle documents spark such excitement? In the 1950s, Schmidt worked for the automotive supplier ATE. He also viewed himself as a test engineer and, more or less driven by personal interest, was active in testing vehicles, engine parts, and new designs, some of which were his own. Through his job at ATE, he cultivated good relationships with Volkswagen and Porsche and claimed to have more than 20 VW Beetles, eight Porsche models, and a variety of patents for the automotive industry. The eight Porsche vehicles were manufactured at the plant at his special request and were ahead of their time – sports cars with many highly unusual extras that had an almost fictional feel about them. Take, for instance, the 356 A Coupé that Henk Spin is now driving along the dike toward the garage. 

According to official documents, the car with chassis number 102324 was delivered to Reinhard Schmidt as a plant sale on February 1, 1958. Just as it was back then, the 75 PS engine from the 356 1600 Super is installed at the rear, delivering a top speed of 170 kmh. Later that same year, an article appeared in issue 32 of Christophorus that focused on one of the many extras: “A customer was recently at the plant and had something truly extraordinary installed in the Porsche: a telephone for conversations with home and business partners during the drive (…).” While this is now possible in Germany, it goes on to say, you shouldn’t expect to pay anything less than 5,000 deutsche mark. “The post office assigns you your very own wave, as this telephone works without a wire. Yes, even a private person is authorized to have their own ‘telephone wave.’ You can tell by looking at the many different nonstandard instruments on the dashboard that this car is fitted with a whole lot of extras (…).” As amusing as this text now sounds nearly 70 years later, it still reveals something astonishing: Schmidt was willing to pay nearly half of the cost of the new car for the telephone system alone. And that’s just the highest of a great many individual costs on his list of special requests. 

Pure passion for Porsche

Henk Spin parks the 356 in his workshop at the edge of town. A 2018 Macan and a 2006 Cayman S – both white – are parked in front of the door. The next restoration project, a 911 T (original 911 built in 1972), is awaiting its turn on the lifting platform next to the 356. There’s also a 911 Carrera S Cabriolet (991) parked at his home. With his tools painted in classic Porsche Red and framed photographs of his rally competitions hung on the wall, his pure passion is also impossible to miss in the workshop. Upstairs on the second floor, there’s a wall full of historical racing posters, and another dedicated to around a hundred signed autograph cards of race car drivers. Porsche is everywhere you look. Even Richard von Frankenberg, the former race car driver and Editor in Chief of Christophorus, is immortalized here. The office features two shelves full of books about cars, other Porsche memorabilia, and an almost complete Christophorus collection, with just three issues missing. But with the main character waiting downstairs, there’s no time to take it all in.

Help from Porsche Classic Experts

“When the car that I had bought from a restorer in the US state of Arizona was unloaded at my doorstep, it looked worse than I had feared,” explains Spin. “I had to repair most of the body. And I had to rely on the help of experts for just about every other component.” Chassis, engine, electronics, seat upholstery – Spin had to track down a specialist for every part of the job. Much of it, including a new nose, came from Porsche Classic. “I had to learn to be patient. It took nearly four years to get all the parts of the body together. Then I began putting the puzzle pieces together.” 

And gradually the 356 began to take shape and resemble its original form, just as it was described in the certificate of delivery issued by Stuttgarter Karosseriewerk Reutter & Co. to Porsche in January 1958: painted in the special color Porcelain White; door panels, dashboard, and backrest in imitation leather, antique grain, Acella Red; seats in white napa leather; window trim painted red; buttons in light beige; carpet in mottled beige; turn signal switch and steering wheel in beige, and specially designed electric systems and antennas. Production at Reutter took around five weeks longer than it does for a series production car.

But the Schmidt car is an extraordinary puzzle, which is why Spin had to not only collect classic car parts, but also do some detective work. He points to two binders jam-packed with historical photos, articles, emails with archive employees, and copies of original documents. “With the help of experts and all the documents, I was able to get closer and closer to the Schmidt car’s original form over the years,” says Spin. All the nonstandard extras and instruments can now be seen again in all their glory. In addition to the special colors Porcelain White and Acella Red, the most eye-catching features are the Lorenz telephone system with its 50-centimeter antenna, the Blaupunkt Köln No. S 914.551 car radio, and a replica of the original red license plate, which identifies the car as a test vehicle. “It takes patience to track down exactly the right telephone or radio,” says Spin. “After all, they were produced nearly 70 years ago.”

But Reinhard Schmidt’s special requests didn’t end there. Additional extras onboard included the engine bay and trunk lighting; a hazard light activated with a toggle switch to the left of the speedometer; a speedometer from the 356 Carrera; a tachometer from the 356 1600 Super; to the left of that, a Junghans clock that was also installed in the 356 A 1600 GS Carrera GT rally car; a toolbox below the fold-up front passenger seat; exclusively toggle switches; a portable rally light; a turn signal switch to the right of the steering wheel; speakers in the door panels; reverse lights; and an electric pump for the windshield wiper fluid instead of the typical foot pedal. “Versuchswagen 145” (Test Car 145) also appears on yellow plates at the front and rear. Everything is now like it was nearly 70 years ago, all of it restored by Henk Spin.

“Porsche introduced a lot of what we see in this car in series production years later. In some ways, all of the Schmidt cars were vehicles from the future,” he says, a smile flashing across his face. Knowing that there’s no other car like this anywhere in the world is, without a doubt, something truly special. Especially when you’ve invested ten years in restoration and, with the necessary skills, a whole lot of passion, and a bit of luck, breathed new life into a piece of history. “While there may be some who view all of that as an economically unjustifiable indulgence, the enjoyment of technical perfection isn’t the worst way to experience personal happiness,” says the Christophorus article from 1958 in closing. 

Info

Text first published in the Porsche magazine Christophorus 415.

Text: Matthias Kriegel
Bilder: Mirko Westerbrink

Copyright: All images, videos and audio files published in this article are subject to copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part is not permitted without the written consent of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG. Please contact christophorus@porsche.de for further information.

BEIJING — The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu, long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times.

Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60% alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of “gan bei,” the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games.

“If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade ago. The annual event aims to promote the traditional liquor, which is far less known internationally than whiskey or vodka.

Moutai, a kind of baijiu made in mountainous Guizhou province in southwestern China, is known as the country’s “national liquor.”

Perhaps its biggest endorsement came in 1974, when U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger banqueted with Deng Xiaoping, who would later become China’s top leader.

“I think if we drink enough Moutai, we can solve anything,” Kissinger said.

“Then, when I return to China, we must take steps to increase our production of it,” Deng replied, according to an archived document from the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian.

Price fluctuations of Feitian Moutai, the liquor’s most famous brand, serve as a barometer for China’s baijiu market. This year, its price has dropped by 36% after four consecutive years of decline, according a report by the China Alcoholic Drinks Association.

The report forecast China’s baijiu production will likely fall for the eighth straight year in 2025. Baijiu consumption has dropped as people spend more cautiously, cutting back on banquets and drinking due to a weaker economy.

Perennial anti-corruption campaigns by the ruling Communist Party targeting lavish official dinners have taken a harsh toll. In May, the party issued new rules banning cigarettes and alcohol during work meals.

China’s drinking culture is evolving, with younger people keen to protect their health and less inclined to overindulge or be bound by rigid social conventions. Faced with far more choices, they might instead opt for whiskey, wine or non-alcoholic alternatives.

“There is an old saying in China: ‘No banquet is complete without alcohol.’ It means in the past, without alcohol there is no social lubricant,” 30-year-old Chi Bo said while having cocktails with friends in Beijing’s chic Sanlitun area.

“People no longer want to drink alcohol or tend to drink less but they can still sit together and even discuss serious affairs,” Chi said. “Most of the people don’t want to drink alcohol unless they have to.”

Baijiu makers are responding with creative innovations like baijiu-flavored ice cream.

Kweichou Moutai partnered with China’s Luckin’ Coffee last year to introduce a Moutai-flavored latte that reportedly sells 5 million cups a day across China. Bartenders also are designing cocktails using a baijiu base.

“There are so many choices right now,” Boyce said. “It’s just about fighting for attention in terms of choice.”

Jiangxiaobai, a newer brand made in southwestern China’s Chongqing, has targeted young consumers from the beginning. It offers fruit-infused baijiu with an alcohol content below 10%, packaged in smaller, more affordable bottles adorned with philosophical or sentimental phrases meant to resonate with Chinese youth such as, “Unspoken words. In my eyes, in drafts, in dreams, or downed in a drink.”

“Our promotion of products combines the culture and lifestyle young people advocate,” Jiangxiaobai marketing director Fan Li said. “From our products to our branding, it’s a process of embracing the younger generation.”

Shirley Huang, out with friends on a Friday night in Sanlitun, said she had never touched baijiu at age 27, preferring cocktails. But that night, something new on the menu caught her attention: a baijiu-based cocktail.

“Baijiu is quietly making its way into our lives. We just haven’t noticed,” she said “It may not appear as itself, but it reemerges in new forms.”

___

Associated Press video producers Olivia Zhang and Wayne Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON/BERLIN – European governments are taking steps to break their dependence on critical scientific data the United States historically made freely available to the world, and are ramping up their own data collection systems to monitor climate change and weather extremes, according to Reuters interviews.

The effort – which has not been previously reported – marks the most concrete response from the European Union and other European governments so far to the US government’s retreat from scientific research under President Donald Trump’s administration.

Since his return to the White House, Trump has initiated sweeping budget cuts to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies, dismantling programs conducting climate, weather, geospatial and health research, and taking some public databases offline.

As those cuts take effect, European officials have expressed increasing alarm that – without continued access to US-supported weather and climate data – governments and businesses will face challenges in planning for extreme weather events and long-term infrastructure investment, according to Reuters interviews. In March, more than a dozen European countries urged the EU Commission to move fast to recruit American scientists who lose their jobs to those cuts.

Asked for comment on NOAA cuts and the EU’s moves to expand its own collection of scientific data, the White House Office of Management and Budget said Trump’s proposed cuts to the agency’s 2026 budget were aimed at programs that spread “fake Green New Scam ‘science,’” a reference to climate change research and policy.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the US is funding real science again,” Rachel Cauley, an OMB spokesperson, said via email.

European officials told Reuters that – beyond the risk of losing access to data that is bedrock to the world’s understanding of climate change and marine systems – they were concerned by the general US pullback from research.

“The current situation is much worse than we could have expected,” Sweden’s State Secretary for Education and Research Maria Nilsson, told Reuters. “My reaction is, quite frankly, shock.”

ALSO READ: Over 20 research projects at UK universities halted after US funding withdrawal

The Danish Meteorological Institute described the US government data as “absolutely vital” – and said it relied on several data sets to measure including sea ice in the Arctic and sea surface temperatures. “This isn’t just a technical issue, reliable data underpins extreme weather warnings, climate projections, protecting communities and ultimately saves lives,” said Adrian Lema, director of the DMI’s National Center for Climate Research.

Reuters interviewed officials from eight European countries who said their governments were undertaking reviews of their reliance on US marine, climate and weather data. Officials from seven countries – Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden – described joint efforts now in the early stages to safeguard key health and climate data and research programs.

Leaning on US

As a priority, the EU is expanding its access to ocean observation data, a senior European Commission official told Reuters. Those data sets are seen as critical to the shipping and energy industries as well as early storm warning systems.

Over the next two years, the senior official said, the EU plans to expand its own European Marine Observation and Data Network which collects and hosts data on shipping routes, seabed habitats, marine litter and other concerns.

The initiative was aimed at “mirroring and possibly replacing US-based services”, the senior European Commission official told Reuters.

Europe is particularly concerned about its vulnerability to US funding cuts to NOAA’s research arm that would affect the Global Ocean Observing System, a network of ocean observation programs that supports navigation services, shipping routes and storm forecasting, a second EU official told Reuters.

The insurance industry relies on the Global Ocean Observing System’s disaster records for risk modelling. Coastal planners use shoreline, sea-level, and hazard data to guide infrastructure investments. The energy industry uses oceanic and seismic datasets to assess offshore drilling or wind farm viability.

In addition, the senior EU Commission official said, the EU is considering increasing its funding of the Argo program, a part of the Global Ocean Observing System which operates a global system of floats to monitor the world’s oceans and track global warming, extreme weather events and sea-level rise.

NOAA last year described the program, in operation for over 25 years, as the “crown jewel”, opens new tabof ocean science. It makes its data freely available to the oil and gas industry, marine tourism and other industries.

The United States funds 57 percent of Argo’s $40 million annual operating expenses, while the EU funds 23 percent. The White House and NOAA did not respond to questions about future support for that program.

The European moves to establish independent data collection and play a bigger role in Argo represent a historic break with decades of US leadership in ocean science, said Craig McLean, who retired in 2022 after four decades at the agency. He said US leadership of weather, climate and marine data collection was unmatched, and that through NOAA the US has paid for more than half of the world’s ocean measurements.

ALSO READ: 23 US states, DC sue Trump admin over health funding cuts

European scientists acknowledge the outsized role the US government has played in global scientific research and data collection – and that European countries have grown overly dependent on that work.

“It’s a bit like defense: we rely heavily on the US in that area, too. They’re trailblazers and role models—but that also makes us dependent on them,” Katrin Boehning-Gaese, scientific director of Germany’s Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, told Reuters.

‘Guerrilla archivists’

A number of European governments are now taking measures to reduce that dependence. Nordic countries met to coordinate data storage efforts in the Spring, Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland told Reuters. European science ministers also discussed the US science budget cuts at a meeting in Paris in May.

Aasland said Norway was setting aside $2 million to back up and store US data to ensure stable access.

The Danish Meteorological Institute in February started downloading historical US climate data in case it is deleted by the US It is also preparing to switch from American observations to alternatives, Christina Egelund, Minister of Higher Education and Science of Denmark, said in an interview.

“The potentially critical issue is when new observations data stop coming in,” the Institute’s Lema said. While weather models could continue to operate without US data, he said the quality would suffer.

Meanwhile, the German government has commissioned scientific organizations, including the center, to review its reliance on US databases.

Since Trump returned to the White House, scientists and citizens worldwide have been downloading US databases related to climate, public health or the environment that are slated for decommissioning – calling it “guerrilla archiving”.

“We actually received requests—or let’s say emergency calls—from our colleagues in the US, who said, ‘We have a problem here… and we will have to abandon some datasets”, said Frank Oliver Gloeckner, head of the digital archive PANGAEA, which is operated by publicly funded German research institutions.

About 800 of NOAA’s 12,000-strong workforce have been terminated or taken financial incentives to resign as part of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency cuts.

The White House 2026 budget plan seeks to shrink NOAA even further, proposing a $1.8 billion cut, or 27 percent of the agency’s budget, and a near-20 percent reduction in staffing, bringing down the NOAA workforce to 10,000.

The budget proposal would eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA’s main research arm, which is responsible for ocean observatory systems including Argo, coastal observing networks, satellite sensors and climate model labs.

It is also reducing its data products. Between April and June, NOAA announced on its website the decommissioning of 20 datasets or products related to earthquakes and marine science.

NOAA did not respond to requests for comment.

READ MORE: US scientists protest against funding cuts

Gloeckner said there were no legal hurdles to storing the US government data as it was already in the public domain.

But without significant funds and infrastructure, there are limits to what private scientists can save, said Denice Ross, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit science policy group and the US government’s chief data officer during Joe Biden’s administration.

Databases need regular updating – which requires the funding and infrastructure that only governments can provide, Ross said.

Over the last few months, the Federation and EU officials have held a series of talks with European researchers, US philanthropies and health and environment advocacy groups to discuss how to prioritize what data to save.

“There is an opportunity for other nations and institutions and philanthropies to fill in the gaps if US quality starts to falter,” she said.

Mumbai, August 01, 2025: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.’s Farm Equipment Business (FEB), part of the Mahindra Group, today announced its tractor sales numbers for July 2025.

Domestic sales in July 2025 were at 26,990 units, as against 25,587 units in July 2024, reflecting a 5% year-on-year growth.

Total tractor sales (Domestic + Exports) during July 2025 were at 28,708 units, as against 27,209 units for the same period last year. Exports for the month stood at 1,718 units.

Commenting on the performance, Veejay Nakra, President – Farm Equipment Business, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. said, “We have sold 26,990 tractors in the domestic market during the month of July 2025, a growth of 5% over last year. This performance was driven by sustained land preparation activities, supported by robust cash flows in rural markets following the conclusion of Rabi crop harvesting. Additionally, the normal progression of monsoon across most regions further contributed to good demand during the onset of sowing for the Kharif season. In the exports market, we have sold 1,718 tractors, a growth of 6% over last year.”

About Mahindra

Founded in 1945, the Mahindra Group is one of the largest and most admired multinational federation of companies with 260,000 employees in over 100 countries. It enjoys a leadership position in farm equipment, utility vehicles, information technology and financial services in India and is the world’s largest tractor company by volume. It has a strong presence in renewable energy, agriculture, logistics, hospitality and real estate. The Mahindra Group has a clear focus on leading ESG globally, enabling rural prosperity and enhancing urban living, with a goal to drive positive change in the lives of communities and stakeholders to enable them to Rise.

Learn more about Mahindra on www.mahindra.com / Twitter and Facebook: @MahindraRise/ For updates subscribe to https://www.mahindra.com/news-room

Media contact information

Nayana Borthakur
Head – Communications
Automotive & Farm Sector (Corporate)
Mahindra & Mahindra Limited
Email – [email protected]