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The country’s largest two-wheeler company Hero MotoCorp laid the foundation stone for its eighth factory today at Chittoor District in Andhra Pradesh.
The company now has five plants in India and one each in Colombia and Bangladesh.
The Chittoor plant is to come up at an investment of ₹1,600 crore over a 600-acre site will go onstream in December 2019. The company is planning a total capacity of 1.8 million units over multiple phases.
The foundation stone was laid by the Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, in the presence of Pawan Munjal, Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Hero MotoCorp.
Munjal recalled that Naidu had convinced him to set up the company’s first plant in South India during the course of a dinner meeting at his residence.
The project, which is coming up in a backward area of the State, is expected to generate 12,000 jobs, including 2,000 directly.
The Hero project is expected to attract equal amount of investments from its component suppliers, taking the total investments on account of Hero project to ₹3,200 crore, according to Chandrababu Naidu.
“With the growth in domestic two-wheeler market, a new Hero plant has been established every four years. We will continue to increase our volumes due to consistent growth in domestic demand as also our growing presence in overseas markets,” said Munjal.
When fully operational, this new factory will take the total combined installed capacity to 11 million units of motorcycles and scooters per annum in line with its vision of surpassing 10 million unit by 2020, he said.
Hero’s present capacity is over eight million per annum. Its Gujarat unit will also see some capacity addition.
Munjal added that given the strategic location of the plant, the new factory can also be developed as a key hub for exports. The company has presence in 27 countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Central Africa.
Electric vehicles
On electric vehicle plans, Munjal pointed out that the company had made investments in Bengaluru-based start-up Ather Energy, which will soon be launching its first product.
Also, Hero is working on its own range of electric bikes and scooters in its R&D unit at Jaipur, he added.
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