Eicher Motors, the makers of Royal Enfield motorbikes, will invest R600 crore in the current financial year, even as it looks to set up a greenfield facility near its existing plant at Oragadam near Chennai. It also plans to sell 6.75 lakh motorcycles in the current financial year compared with 5.07 lakh bikes sold during the last financial year, with 100% capacity utilisation, Siddhartha Lal, managing director & CEO, Eicher Motors, said in Chennai on Friday.
“We have grown 38% in Q1 unit sales. We hope to do better in the coming months, as we continue to get huge orders. We also expect to do better in our exports as Royal Enfield has entered into Manila recently, in addition to its entry into Bangkok and Jakarta. All these markets are not only big two-wheeler ones but are known for mid-size bikes like the Royal Enfield products.”
“With the expansion of our existing facility at Oragadam to 6.75 lakh units per annum (from 400,000 lakh units last year) with a capex of R500 crore, we will be able to bring down the waiting period for our bikes from a peak of 11 months to three months now. It will go down further once our new greenfield facility goes onstream in 2017. Post-Vallam Vadagal facility (first phase),
our total capacity will touch 9 lakh units per annum
by 2018.”
On the adventure tourer ‘Himalayan’, Lal said the monthly production capacity has been increased to over 1,000 units. Himalayan too will be exported eventually, he said.