Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, Honda’s wholly-owned motorcycle Indian subsidiary, has announced its intent to essentially double its capacity in the country’s rapidly growing motorcycle market. Expanding on the company’s second plant in the Tapukara Industrial Area of Rajasthan, HMSI also plans on now building a third production facility in the Bangalore area.
Both of these plants will produce 1.2 million units each when at full capacity (the second Tapukara plant currently does 600,000 units per year), bringing HMSI’s total production capacity in India to 4 million units per year. To put things in perspective, Honda’s production levels in India are about eight times the total motorcycle market in the United States of America…for all manufacturers.
With two plants in northern India, Honda chose the Banagalore area in the south of India as its third location so the company could more effectively serve the nation’s geographical motorcycle demands. The second-largest motorcycle market worldwide (China being the largest), over 11.3 million two-wheelers were sold in India in 2010. That figure represents a 30% increase over the previous year…you know, the same year where the rest of the motorcycle industry was collapsing in on itself like the Bay Bridge during the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Honda’s move with its second and soon-to-be-built third plant is a response to the overall rapid growth occurring in India, and is also an attempt to keep pace with HMSI’s own sales growth, which grew 40% last year alone. In case you’re still not sure how crazy things are for Honda in India, consider this factoid: each sales year, for the past 10 years, has been Honda’s best sales year in India.
Source: Honda Worldwide
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