Royal Enfield has caught the fancy of enthusiasts in India more so the last few years than in all the decades earlier put together. The 60 year old has has issues keeping pace with the demand. Anybody who has tried to buy a Classic 350/500 knows the woes of being made to wait for months. The good news is that, Royal Enfield has at last commenced production at its second plant at Oragadam, Chennai.
The plant is to be completed in phases, with the first phase spread over 50 acres now boasting a capacity of 150,000 units. This has increased Royal Enfield’s capacity this year to a combined 175,000 units.
Rolling out the first motorcycle from the Oragadam facility, Mr Siddhartha Lal, MD & CEO, Eicher Motors Ltd. said, “At Royal Enfield we have recorded a major milestone today with this plant at Oragadam becoming operational. Royal Enfield has witnessed a huge surge in demand in the recent past, recording a growth of over 50% for each of the last two years. We have been extremely successful in stretching the capacity of our existing 60 year old plant to record levels – achieving production of over 12,000 motorcycles in the month of March 2013. Yet the demand for our motorcycles has continued to outpace the supply. Therefore we have conceived of this new facility on a much larger tract of land and created a master-plan that can take the eventual production here to over 500,000 per year. With the speedy execution of the first phase of the plan, we have revised our production target upwards in 2013 – to 175,000 motorcycles from both plants. However, even as we start commercial production today, we have already begun working on the second phase of expansion at Oragadam, which will further increase the production capacity to 250,000 motorcycles in 2014. With this new facility, we now have the ability to scale our production quantity quickly in response to market demand.”
“This new plant has been benchmarked to achieve the highest level of quality and productivity. We have re-tooled many of the parts that make up our motorcycles – so that they are of exacting accuracy and finish. The substrate quality of the sheet metal parts, for example, is now at par with the best in the world; when these parts undergo the world-leading CED and paint process here at Oragadam – they will have a surface finish and life of the highest quality”, he further added.
