No dispatches during annual plant shutdown this time: Maruti

The country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India today said it will not be dispatching any vehicle to dealers during its week-long annual plant maintenance shutdown as it has no stock due to high demand.

The company will be closing all its plants at Gurgaon and Manesar for a week from December 27 to January 3. Usually, the company keeps inventories for up to seven days to supply to dealers during the maintenance shutdown, which is done twice in a year in June and December.

"We will have our annual maintenance shutdown from next week. So during this period, one week's production will not be available for dispatches," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Chief General Manager (Marketing) Shashank Srivastava told PTI.

According to sources, the company is likely to lose about 25,000 units during the week-long period and is unlikely to have any inventory to dispatch to the dealers.

Usually MSI has 5-7 days of stock. However, this time, it does not have any inventory due to very high demand throughout the year," a source said.

The company's domestic sales crossed one lakh units twice in October and November at 1,07,555 units and 1,02,503 units respectively. The figures for October were its best numbers so far for the domestic market.

"In December, MSI is unlikely to sell one lakh units in the domestic market," the source said.

Including exports, MSI sold a total of 1,12,554 vehicles in November, the sixth time in this fiscal that the company's monthly sales figure crossed one lakh mark.

The company had reported its highest ever total monthly sales at 1,18,908 units in October, registering a robust 39.21 per cent jump over the year-ago period.

The carmaker had said that it would ramp up production by about 10 per cent to nearly 1.1 lakh units every month from October this year, taking its annual output to 13 lakh units in 2011-12.

At present, MSI, which is 54.2 per cent owned by Japan's Suzuki, has an annual capacity of 8.5 lakh units at its Gurgaon plant, while Manesar can produce 3.5 lakh units annually, with the overall capacity totalling to 12 lakh units per year.

The company had announced to invest 35 billion yen (Rs 1,925 crore) to set up a third plant with an installed capacity of 2.5 lakh units inside the Manesar facility. Currently, MSI is investing Rs 1,700 crore on a second plant at Manesar, having an annual capacity of 2.5 lakh units.