Honda Plans To Expand Scooter Production At Gujarat Plant

Aiming a sales target of 3.3 million scooters in this financial year, Honda is going to expand the production capacity at its scooter-only plant in Gujarat.

Honda Motorcycles & Scooter India (HMSI), the leading scooter manufacturer in India, has set a sales target of 3.3 million scooters this financial year. To achieve this, the company is planning to expand the production capacity of its largest and scooter-only plant in Vithalapur, Gujarat.

Honda’s bestselling Activa also achieved the position of top-selling two-wheeler in the Indian market recently, a spot which was hitherto held by the Hero Splendor. On the other hand, Hero MotoCorp and TVS Motors are also seeing a sharp hike in their scooter sales. And it could be another reason for the expansion in the production capacity, which will help Honda to reduce the waiting period backlog on its popular products.

Commenting on this, Yadvinder Singh Guleria, senior VP, sales & marketing, HMSI, said, "We have started trial production in our second line in the Gujarat plant which is a scooter-only plant. In the first three months we have already utilised full capacity in line 1. Our scooter booking backlog is now down from 35,000 to 28,000 and with increased availability of our scooters we will increase our marketshare in 2016."

The company has clocked a 19 per cent hike in overall sales last month, including 7 percent in the motorcycle and 25 per cent in the scooter segment. Guleria also stated that its cumulative scooter sales have increased by 29 per cent while motorcycle sales have increased by 11 per cent in the first two months of the new fiscal. He also said that the company is looking at a 65:35 scooter: bike ratio in this fiscal and its target is to hit 5.43 million units in overall production during this time period.

HMSI also hopes to increase its motorcycle sales this year with the Navi. It aims to sell 50,000 to 1 lakh units of this newly-launched two-wheeler, which has already crossed the sales mark of 10,000 units. Furthermore, it aims to attain an export hike of 20 - 25 percent by the end of this fiscal. Guleria said, "Initially we were hobbled by capacity constraints but with the new plant we expect to do 20%-25% more than the 2 lakh units we did last year."

Also Read: Hero Tops the 125cc Category in April 2016 Beating Segment Leader Honda