In an effort to maintain its 50% market share in the passenger car category by 2015, Maruti Suzuki India is planning to increase its production capacity by 3 lakh units and the total output by nearly 5 lakh units over the next five years. The country?s largest passenger car manufacturer is increasing production capacity to cater growing demand in the domestic market, which is pegged at 3 million units by 2015. Not just this, the company, which took 26 years to reach the sales target of 1 million units, is now eyeing half the time to touch the 2-million unit mark.
?My desire is to double the production capacity at Manesar from 3 lakh units now to 6 lakh units by 2015, subject to the board approval later this month,? Maruti Suzuki India MD & CEO Shinzo Nakanishi said, while refusing to divulge details about the estimated investment in the capacity expansion. However, industry experts feel that the company would require an additional investment of Rs 500-700 crore over the next five years to scale up its capacity to the desired levels.
According to Nakanishi, if the domestic passenger car industry grows up to 3 million units by 2015, the company would need sales of 1.5 million units. However, its current capacity at Gurgaon plant is 6 lakh units which is scalable up to 1 lakh unit more while that at the Manesar plant is 3 lakh units and this could be expanded up to 3,80,000 units a year. Hence, an additional capacity of a minimum of 4.2 lakh units would be needed and this can be catered to by increasing the production capacity at Manesar, he said.
While the company will strengthen its sedan portfolio in the country this year by adding Kizashi to its portfolio, Maruti on Tuesday unveiled its completely indigenously designed multi-purpose vehicle, the Concept rIII, the hybrid variant of SX4 and the hatchback version of SX4, which is on of the largest selling hatchback in Europe.
?While we hope to achieve the 1-million unit mark by March 2010, our strong product line up across different segments and the growing popularity of small cars in India will help us scale another one million unit mark in less than 13 years from 2010,? Nakanishi added.
The withdrawal of scrappage incentives in European markets might hit the export opportunities for the company. “Nissan has sourced 45,000 units of A-star and we hope the numbers to go down further in the next financial year. While this will require getting into new markets, we expect our exports to remain flat in 2010-11 vis-?-vis the current financial year at 1,30,000 units,” he added.