Yamaha India aims to breach 8 lakh mark for two-wheelers

June was a good month for Yamaha as the manufacturer registered a 14.4 per cent growth for two-wheeler sales in India. Now, the Japanese manufacturer has chalked out a new strategy with the aim of producing over eight lakh units in this calendar year. India is a major export hub for Yamaha and 25 per cent of these numbers would be shipped off to its foreign markets. 

Yamaha currently has two operational manufacturing facilities in India, at Surajpur, in Uttar Pradesh and at Faridabad, in Haryana. A third facility in Chennai is still in the works and is expected to be commissioned by next year. Once this Chennai plant becomes operational, the facility will add upto 18 lakh units to the tally annually, eventually increasing the manufacturers overall capacity to nearly 30 lakh units by 2018.

Yamaha currently sells around 45,000 two-wheelers in India every month and it expects the numbers to rise to 60,000 units by the second half of this year. While scooters take up 45 per cent of its monthly sales, the recently launched fuel-injected version 2.0 FZ series is expected to further boost the company’s numbers. 

Last month, the government announced an extension of the excise duty cut on automobiles to six more months. The announcement came as a breather for two-wheeler manufacturers as the concessions had led to a considerable jump in sales figures and these numbers are expected to keep improving owing to the extension.