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Even as it expects improvements in India sales, Ford’s export story is getting stronger as the US carmaker displaced Hyundai to become the largest passenger vehicle (PV) exporter from India in August.
However, in cumulative exports for the current fiscal, Ford India stays in the second slot.
By shipping higher number of ‘India-built’ vehicles over the past five months, Ford displaced Maruti to grab the second slot. With robust exports, its numbers even surpassed export volumes of Hyundai in August.
During the month, Ford exported 17,860 units of PVs as compared with Hyundai’s exports of 16,506 units and Maruti’s 12,131 units.
During the April-August 2016 period, Ford’s total PV exports stood at 60,249 units, an increase of 45 per cent over the previous year.
Narrowing volume Hyundai’s exports were flat at 70,893 units during the first five-month period of this fiscal, according to the data provided by SIAM.
In the past one year, the gap in export volume between Hyundai and Ford has been narrowing.
Hyundai has been facing some challenges in some of its export destinations. Also, its domestic demand continues to rise, and hence, its share of exports has been declining.
However, Ford continues to see momentum in its export markets and that has helped the company to ramp up exports from India. Also, the company is now targeting more markets to serve with ‘Made in India’ vehicles.
Ford’s car exports more than doubled to 24,732 units when compared with 10,427 units in a year-ago period. Its SUV exports also grew to 35,517 units against 31,240 units.
The company exports Figo, Aspire and EcoSport to over 40 markets around the world.
Production up Maruti occupied the third spot with total exports of 48,908 units, followed by Nissan at 37,612 units and Volkswagen at 36,999 units.
During April-August 2016, India exported about a fifth of its PV production. Total production stood at 1,500,277 units, up six per cent over the same period previous year, and of which 296,148 units were exported.
“With Ford’s new facility in Sanand as well as the upcoming Maruti plant in Gujarat, PV exports, especially for compact and super compact cars and UVs are likely to witness healthy growth in the medium term,” according to Subrata Ray, Group Vice-President – Corporate Ratings, Icra.
Passenger vehicle exports from India have been in the region of 5-6 lakh units a year and this is expected to grow in the coming years with more number of players making India as their production hub.
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