Yamaha Motor facility in Chennai to start production in November

The company envisages market share to go up twice in next couple of years

Yamaha Motor India's Rs 1,500 crore new manufacturing plant near Chennai is expected to commence production next month. Meanwhile, the company is also expecting its market share in two-wheeler sector to double from the current 4.5-5% in the next few years, said senior officials from the company.

Speaking to the reporters in the sidelines of felicitating the Indian technician from Tamil Nadu, who won one of the top price at the Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix 2014, Asano Masaki, CEO and managing director of Yamaha Motor India Sales Pvt Ltd said, "the facility will be launched in November this year and the commercial production will be from next year onwards."

He added that the initial capacity would be around 4 lakh units per annum, next year, while the company would gradually increase the capacity to 1.8 million by 2018.

The company, in May 2012, has said that the new factory will employ 1,800 people and have an annual two-wheeler production rate of 400,000 units at the start of operations. Production capacity will then be increased in stages to a level of 1.8 million units annually by 2018, at which time employment is expected to reach 6,500 people. at which time employment is expected to reach 6,500 people. The forecast for the total investment in the new factory and facilities is around Rs 1,500 crore over the next five years, it said.

The facility would start with manufacturing the scooters of Yamaha, and while it would add motorcycles, there is no timeline fixed for the addition. Considering that the scooter industry is growing at 22-25%, which is higher than the motorcycles, the company is also looking at increasing its presence in the segment.

The company currently has a marketshare of around 4.5-5% in the two-wheeler segment, and plans are to increase it to 10% in the next couple of years, he added. In scooter segment, it has around 7-8% market share, which it is expected to increase to 10% in next few months, said Roy Kurian, vice president, sales & marketing, Yamaha Motors India.

Yamaha Motor India, which has sold around 4.5 lakh units in the domestic market and around two lakh units through exports, is expecting to clock in domestic sales of six lakh units and exports of two lakh units in the current year. The company is also increasing its dealership network from 1,200 to around 2,000 by next year.

It would also launch four more Yamaha Training Academy to have a total of 10 training academy, which is part of the group's global education and training programme for motorcycle technicians to ensure world-class service. The company today felicitated Meenakshi Sundaram Subramanian, from a dealership centre in Madurai, who won the Number one Technician Title in the commuter class at the Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix 2014, which tested the expertise of 20 skilled technicians in Yamaha dealerships across the world.