Honda kickstarts Rs 1,100-cr Ahmedabad scooter plant

Automotive giant Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India's Rs 1,100-crore manufacturing plant at Vithalapur village in Ahmedabad district was inaugurated by Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel on Wednesday. The scooter plant, which is the fourth two-wheeler manufacturing facility of Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt Ltd (HMSI) in the country, has a total capacity to produce 1.2 million automatic scooters annually.

The company has invested Rs 1,100 crore to set up this facility, where Honda will make its flagship brand of scooter Activa and Dio, said company's Group Vice President and Director V Sridhar. 

"This plant in Gujarat has become our fourth two-wheeler plant in India after Haryana, Rajasthan and Karnataka. This plant is having the capacity to churn out 12 lakh automatic scooters, mainly Activa and Dio.

"Commercial production of 6 lakh units started today. In the later stage, we will start the second line of production by mid of 2016 to add another 6 lakh scooters," he said. At present, HMSI manufactures 46 lakh two-wheelers, including bikes, in three of their plants annually. With this new plant, its total two-wheeler production capacity in the country will increase by 26 per cent to 58 lakh units by the end of this year, Sridhar added.

"This plant is spread across 250 acres. It has created 3,000 direct as well as indirect job opportunities. Out of these 3,000 jobs, 900 are direct jobs provided by us. 85 per cent of our staff in the plant are from Gujarat," he said. 

Chief Minister Patel remembered Prime Minister Narendra Modi for envisioning the development of Gujarat by bringing in such companies to open their plants here when he was at the helm of affairs in the state.