The Norton Meltdown: How Does It Affect India Ops?

Post the Norton administration, Indian bikemaker TVS has acquired the British brand. We spoke with Sudarshan Venu, TVS’s Joint MD to understand how this partnership would impact Norton and TVS's future. Know all the details here. 

Norton Motorcycles has been in the news recently and not for good reasons. The company has been facing financial turmoil and could end up filing bankruptcy. This could spell bad news for Norton’s India partner Kinetic Motoroyale. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves but try and understand the Norton crisis first.

Norton in hot water:

One of Britain’s oldest surviving brand, Norton Motorcycles, has seen its share of highs and lows. One such example was its purchase in 2008 by British entrepreneur Stuart Garner. Since then, the company briefly seemed to revive and came up with a couple of new motorcycles, one of the later ones being the Norton Atlas 660. However, the company has been facing financial trouble and owes Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) unpaid taxes to the tune of 3,00,000 GBP (approximately Rs 2.8 crore), a sum it has been unable to repay. According to a court order, Norton Motorcycles has been placed into Administration where accounting firm BDO will take a call as to how to recover back taxes while protecting investors’ interests. 

  

The India connect: 

Norton Motorcycles and Pune-based Kinetic Group announced their partnership in 2017. Under this JV, the Norton Commando and Dominator motorcycles were brought to India via the CBU route and sold under Kinetic’s Motoroyale banner. Both companies dabbled with plans to assemble these motorcycles and the Norton Atlas 650 in India. Last year, plans were afoot for Kinetic to locally manufacture and sell Norton designed small capacity motorcycles in India.

 

What now?

Norton’s financial woes do put a spanner in the works. Unless the financial mess is sorted out, we foresee a bleak future for the Norton-Kinetic partnership. We have reached out to Kinetic for a comment and will update this report once we get a response. But the writing is on the wall. We won’t be seeing any small-capacity retro British bikes other than Royal Enfields here anytime soon. As for Norton, unless a larger conglomerate steps in to bail or buy out the company, its future is uncertain. Who knows? With its penchant for buying defunct brands, maybe Mahindra will turn saviour here.