Honda Tapukara plant begins Amaze production

Honda today inaugurated its second car manufacturing unit at Tapukara in Rajasthan. It comes at a much needed time for Honda since its Greater Noida facility was already running at full steam. With the launch of the City and the upcoming Mobilio and Jazz, the new plant will play a big part to help achieve the Japanese carmaker’s target to sell over 3,00,000 units in 2016. 

Honda has started manufacturing the Amaze at its new plant. Both factories have a flexible assembly line which means all Honda models can be manufactured at either or both plants. Since the two units are about four hours apart by road, creating a new supplier base wasn’t required.

The Tapukara plant is spread over 450 acres and was inaugurated in September 2008 in its first phase. It had a press shop and a powertrain unit for engine components to begin with. Honda has added forging, weld shop, paint shop, plastic moulding, frame assembly and an engine testing facility to the plant. Honda has invested over Rs 3,500 crores in the Tapukara plant till date.

It will have an initial capacity of 60,000 units per annum on a single shift basis. Depending on demand, Honda can add a second shift which means doubling the Rajasthan manufacturing capacity to 1,20,000 units. The greater Noida plant too has a capacity of 1.2 lakh units in two shifts which has been increased to 1.7 lakh units last week with the addition of a third shift.

Honda has increased the level of automation at its second plant. Raman Kumar Sharma, Senior VP and Director, Honda Cars India said, “Because of the automation, cost of maintaining quality is much lesser in Tapukara.” 

The Amaze at present has a waiting period of about 3-4 weeks. Since the new plant is just starting up and production is yet to reach optimum levels, the waiting period will continue for a while. Honda has sold 65,000 units of the Amaze since its launch.