Honda to ramp up production of Activa by 300 units per day

Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI), the market leader in the scooters segment with over 50 per cent share, is increasing the manufacturing capacity of its popular model Activa by 300 per day in a bid to reduce the five-month long wait period for the vehicle.

"We currently manufacture 2100 Activas per day at our plant Manesar plant in Haryana that will go up to around 2400 Activas per day," said Sharad Pradhan,regional head-west of HMSI. An Ahmedabad based dealer of HMSI two-wheelers,Punjab Honda,said that there was a high demand of more than 3000 Activas per month in the city and that it has been struggling to meet demand.

HMSI is also in the process of setting up a greenfield two-wheeler plant for around Rs 530 crore at Alwar in Rajasthan that will be mainly dedicated to manufacturing motorcycles. "Currently, around 50 per cent of our production is of scooters and the remaining is of motorcycles.But, in the longrun we plan to increase the production of high volume products like 100-110 cc motorbikes", Masayuki Hamamatsu, advisor-sales and marketing, HMSI said. The Alwar plant will be functional by May 2011 with an initial capacity of six lakh two-wheelers per year that could be eventually be scaled up to 12 lakh units per annum depending on demand.

The second plant will help ease the pressure off the Manesar unit and enable faster deliveries of popular models like the Activa.

HMSI enjoys a 13 per cent share in the overall two wheeler market in the country with a product portfolio of eight vehicles across categories. It sold 12.7 lakh units in 2009-10 and aims at an 18 per cent growth this fiscal targeting sales of 15 lakh two-wheelers. "We are the market leaders in the 125 cc motorbike segment, and have a seven to eight per cent share of the entire motorbike market. Around 50 per cent of the market lies with the 110 cc bikes, and there is a huge scope for increasing our market share in the segment", Pradhan said.

HMSI launched its new 150cc CB Unicorn Dazzler priced at Rs 66,015 ex-showroom Ahmedabad here today. "While the bulk of the market lies with the 100-110cc bikes, the 150 cc segment has grown two fold in the last two years. We have sold one lakh units of our CB Unicorn last fiscal, and with this new launch we plan to take those numbers to 1.2 lakh of the CB series this year", Pradhan said.

The company enjoys a 22 per cent market share in the two-wheeler segment in Gujarat and plans to sell around 7000 units of the CB series here in 2010.