Honda Cars India to export auto components worth Rs.1,000 crore

Japan's Honda Motor Company plans to export components worth Rs.1,000 crore this fiscal -- up from around Rs.700 crore logged in 2014-15 -- while car shipments, as completely-built units, would remain at last year's levels, a top official said.

The Indian company would build a new plant in Gujarat only after reaching full utilisation of its capacities at its two existing plants, the official of Honda's Indian subsidiary said.

"Last year we exported automobile components worth around Rs.700 crore out of India. This fiscal the expectation is around Rs.1,000 crore," Katsushi Inoue, the president and chief executive officer, Honda Cars India Ltd., told reporters here on Tuesday.

According to him, the company also ships out cars to countries like South Africa and neighbouring countries.

Last year we shipped out around 8,000 units and the current year numbers would be more or less the same, said Inoue.

Queried about the company plans to put up a plant in Gujarat, he said it would be in the future after utilising the capacities at the company's two plants in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The two plants has an annual capacity of 120,000 units.

Honda Cars India has started acquiring land in Gujarat while officials are reluctant to talk numbers - acreage needed, plant or investment size.

Meanwhile the company is increasing its production capacity at its Rajasthan plant by 60,000 units at an outlay of Rs.380 crore thereby taking the total capacity at its two plants to 300,000 in mid-2016.

Hoping that the company would log double-digit sales growth this year, Jnaneswar Sen, senior vice president-Marketing and Sales, said last fiscal Honda Cars India grew its volumes by 41 percent at the back of network expansion and launch of new models.

Sen said that during the first quarter of the current fiscal, the company has sold over 44,400 units with bulk of them contributed by Honda City and Honda Amaze models.

He said the newly-launched Honda Jazz and expansion of dealer network to 300 by 2016 are expected to increase the sales volumes further.

Sen said the company would also launch a new Honda Accord model. According to him, Honda Cars India has not changed its stripes of being a premium car maker when cited the launch of small cars like Honda Brio and Honda Jazz.

"We will continue to be the premium car maker in the segments we are present and the car size does not matter," Sen added.