Maruti plans to recover 30k unit production loss

Maruti Suzuki suffered a production loss of around 30,000 units in late may due to a major fire accident at the facility of one of its primary vendors. Subros is Maruti’s AC kit supplier and the fire led to production halt at Maruti’s Manesar and Gurgaon plants for a few shifts.

The impact of the fire at Subros plant on Maruti’s production was felt for four weeks but things are back to normal now.

Talking to ET, R S Kalsi, executive director, MSIL, stated that the company’s production engineers are working on ways to increase production capacity in the coming months to offset the production loss incurred. He was confident that the production halt will not affect the automaker’s growth target for the current fiscal year.

The temporary production halt pushed the waiting periods of the in-demand Baleno and Vitara Brezza to 5-7 months as the order backlogs for these models surpassed 1 lakh units. The company registered a growth of 6.4% in the second quarter of 2016.

Mr. Kalsi stated that the diesel ban has not affected the company directly so far. He also revealed that the new plant in Gujarat (wholly owned by parent company Suzuki) will enter trial production phase in the first quarter of 2017 with production beginning in the next quarter. The plant will have an annual production capacity of 2.5 lakh units.

This article first appeared on Rushlane.com