Bike RPM

Exide To Boost Motorcycle Battery Manufacturing Capacity

The recent surge in demand for two wheelers and the subsequent rise in demand for batteries had seen a direct affect on Exide Industries Ltd., India’s largest maker of automotive batteries. The company expects to increase its sales margin to OEMs from 70 percent to 90 percent and boost its motorcycle battery manufacturing capacity by as much as 60 percent within one year. To achieve this ambitious growth, Exide plans to invest as much as 4 billion rupees into adding capacity to boost production. Exide Industries Ltd. Currently sells the SF Sonic and Exide brands of automotive batteries in India.

[Via: BikeIndia]

Tags: autos, battery, bikes, cars, Exide, production

Honda Motorcycle predicts 50% sales dip

India’s leading gear-less scooter maker Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) is struggling with labour problem at its Manesar plant in Haryana and the firm predicts that this will cause the production to slide roughly by 50% this month.

HMSI had been producing over a lakh motorcycles and scooters earlier but now it feel that it will barely reach the 50,000 unit mark in October and the downward descend may continue in the coming months if a solution is not found for the labour issue. Honda’s other Indian arm – Hero Honda has been dominating the market and registered over four lakh unit of two-wheeler sales in September and hopes to maintain the positive growth.

The over-all two-wheeler sales in India is robust due to the festive season and attractive loan offers and is expected to cross the 9 lakh unit mark in the month of September 2009. However, HMSI due to its labour issue is losing out on this opportunity.

The Manesar region is facing severe labour problems at other plants located in the area. Thankfully , the Honda plant has not witnessed any violent protests but the pace of production has been reduced as the workers seek higher wages. This will further increase the waiting period for the firm’s flagship scooter – Activa.

[Via: BIKE]

Tags: and, bikes, dip, honda, in, india, labour, motorbike, motorcycle, problem, production, sales, two, wheeler

Kawasaki to move motorcycle production from Japan to Thailand

According to a Bloomberg report, Kawasaki will start shifting the production of some of its medium-sized and large motorcycles from Japan to Thailand, from next year. The aim would be to take advantage of lower costs and cheaper labour in Thailand. Kawasaki isn’t the first major motorcycle manufacturer to go to Thailand – Triumph already has two manufacturing facilities in that country.

Kawasaki remains the only Japanese two-wheeler manufacturer that still hasn’t managed to set up operations in India. The company does have some kind of an agreement in place with Bajaj Auto though, and the latter is expected to launch the Kawasaki Ninja 250R in India before the end of this year.

[Via: indiaautomotive]

Tags: also, bike, coming, from, india, japan, kawasaki, model, motorbike, motorcycle, move, production, thailand, to