Honda Pakistan to double its motorcycle production capacity - Report

A new assembly line will be added in a year's time.

Honda Pakistan has announced plans to double its production capacity in three years, to cater to the estimated growth of the motorcycle market in the country.

Atlas Honda Ltd. (AHL), the joint venture company that takes care of production and sales of Honda motorcycles in Pakistan, has two manufacturing plants - one in Karachi (in Southern Pakistan) and the other in Sheikhupura (in Northeastern Pakistan). The former produces 1.5 lakh units and the latter rolls out 6 lakh units per annum.

The capacity expansion will be carried out in the Sheikhupura plant, to equip the facility to produce 12 lakh units per year. The plan will be executed phase-wise, with the first part of the operation involving the installation of a new production line which will commence functioning in October 2016. Further stages over a three year period is planned to achieve the target of producing 1.2 million motorcycles a year.

The investment AHL will be making for this plant expansion process is approximately USD 50 million (INR 327.32 crores). About 1,800 jobs are estimated to be created.

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The overall size of Pakistan's motorcycle market has, on an average, been 13 lakh units for many years. With the said expansion, a total of 13.5 lakh units of Honda motorcycles will be produced in the country, after three years, in a view that the market will grow rapidly. The overall population of the nation is about 19 crores.