Honda Siel 2nd unit plan on track

Honda Siel Cars India is moving ahead with its plans for a second plant in India, but company officials said it would be operational only after one-and-a-half years.

"We are considering setting up a plant in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka or Maharashtra, and have collected the necessary data from these states. We have not yet zeroed in on any location. This would happen only one-and-a-half years from now," N K Goila, vice-president and director (administration) of Honda Siel Cars India, said today.

Honda Siel has a plant in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh with a capacity of 50,000 units per annum. The capacity will be increased to one lakh units per annum at an investment of Rs 400 crore by 2007.

Regarding the sales of the newly launched Honda Civic, H Shimizu, director (sales and marketing) of Honda Siel Cars India, said 2,500 units have been booked within ten days of launch. "We hope to sell more than 1,000 units per month," he added.

The D-segment car is priced at Rs 10.8 lakh and Rs 11.5 lakh (ex-showroom Hyderabad) for the manual and automatic versions, respectively.