Bouyed by a healthy pipeline of products and the growing A2 segment sales which contributes almost 70 percent of the sales of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL), the company ruled out possibilities of any pink slips in the near future at production units despite the readjustments made by the company in production and growth schedules.
Speaking on the sidelines of the launch of its new hatchback model-A Star in Kolkata, M M Singh, MSIL managing executive officer for production, said, “The way the market is building with the growing A2 segment clubbed with the healthy pipeline of products we have in the offing and the new facilities like the casting plant and the machine testing all requires huge workforce. Our focus is being cost competitive, inducing productivity efficiency and maintaining the current market share. There would be no pink slips temporarily.” MSI at present had a total production workforce of almost 7000. The company was in fact looking at scaling up its R&D workforce to meet its one million production target by 2010.
The R&D workforce now was close to 570, to be raised to 740 by end of this year and to 1000 by 2010-11, said sources.
By 2010, MSIL would be in a position to produce one million units from its two factories at Gurgaon and Manesar in Haryana.
Singh said the Gurgaon unit has a capacity of 6.7 lakh.
After launch of its Splash model, production would rise, and the current production cut was part of this process. The A-Star would be manufactured at the Manesar plant with installed capacity of 3 lakh units including Swift, Dezire and SX4 models. MSIL would be exporting a lakh A-star cars from early 2009 to Europe and later to Latin America, Australia etc.
It aimed to sell around 50000 units in the country. The company expected A-Star to contribute half of overall exports of 2 lakh units by 2010-11. Alto was its highest selling model now, followed by WagonR and Omni.
MSI sold close to 2.2 lakh Alto units, 1.2 lakh Wagon R units, and around 80000 Omni per annum. MSIL expected A-Star to supplement sales of existing models to beat 2007 production and sales volumes. Sales and production of A2 segment models were expected to beat any downturn, said Singh. West Bengal and the eastern region contributed seven per cent of total sales of MSIL at 30000 units per annum across all models, said Jatinder S Dhindsa, regional manager of MSIL. The A-Star had a new 998cc KB series engine promising mileage of 19.59 kilometres per litre and was priced between Rs 3.47 lakh and Rs 4.13 lakh ex-showroom in Kolkata. MSIL sales fell 7 per cent in October and the company posted just 2.5 per cent growth in the sales of compact cars in the April-October period.