While India Yamaha Motor will shortly announce a third plant in South India and also introduce scooters, Suzuki is building a new plant at Rohtak.
Japanese two-wheeler manufacturers are shoring up their offerings for the Indian market in view of the steady growth perceived in the entry-level segment. In line with this trend, both India Yamaha Motor and Suzuki Motorcycle India have outlined their plans for setting up new manufacturing facilities to increase their production capacities by 2014.
Yamaha for instance, is eyeing its third plant in Chennai with an investment of around Rs 800 crore over the next two years. The aim is to increase sales to 10 lakh units by 2014 from 330,000 units in 2011.
Yamaha is targeting sales of 450,000 units in 2012-13 and 650,000 units next year. The final announcement on the Chennai plant is expected from the two-wheeler maker in a few weeks’ time when the final negotiations will be wrapped up. At present, Yamaha has two plants – one at Greater Noida and the other at Faridabad in Haryana.
The company produced 520,000 units in 2011, of which 190,000 units were exported. Further, Yamaha will be foraying into the scooter segment at Diwali time this year with the scooters to be produced at its Greater Noida plant.
Roy Kurian, national business head, India Yamaha Motor, says that the thrust will be on style, performance and power in the new scooter range. Recently, Piaggio Vehicles made a comeback of its Vespa brand to tap the growing market for scooters in the country.
The SIAM results for April 2012 also show scooters marching way ahead in the two-wheeler segment with a growth of 30.29 percent, stepping up sales from 174,931 units in April 2011 to 227,924 units in April 2012. Exports were higher at 54.09 percent with an uptick from 6,230 units in April 2011 to 9,600 units in April 2012.
Scooters are further expected to contribute 40 percent of the total sales for Yamaha by 2014 and the company hopes to target young college girls. The manufacturer is also mulling launch of a new 100-150cc bike in 2013-14 to compete in the mass segment where market leader Hero MotoCorp has its maximum offerings.
Suzuki to expand motorcycle capacity
Suzuki Motorcycle India, on the other hand, has decided to construct a new motorcycle plant at Rohtak in Haryana. It already has one plant in Gurgaon built in 2006. Suzuki’s plant is coming up on the same site where Japanese carmaker Maruti Suzuki India is constructing its R&D centre. The production capacity of the new plant will be 500,000 units with production to kick off in 2014 and will strengthen its capacity to meet the market growth.
At present, SMIPL produces two scooters and motorcycle models each. It posted a 122 percent Y-o-Y growth with production at 350,000 units in 2011 in a motorcycle market of over 13 million units during that year. Meanwhile, Suzuki is ramping up its current annual capacity of 360,000 units at its Gurgaon plant to 470,000 units and hopes to complete this by the end of the current fiscal. The company has earmarked aRs 500 crore investment for the on-going expansion at the existing plant which operates at 100 percent capacity. It has also started the mass production of its forthcoming commuter bike Hayate and plans to roll out 10,000 units every month.
SHOBHA MATHUR