Royal Enfield begins production at 3rd plant; waiting period to go down soon

Royal Enfield, a division of Eicher Motors, has announced the commencement of production of motorcycles at the company's new manufacturing facility at Vallam Vadagal near Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

Spread over 50 acres, the facility starts with an installed production capacity of three lakh motorcycles per annum in the first phase.

For 2017-18, Royall Enfield's combined production capacity from all the three plants is planned to be 8.25 lakh units. The company produced and sold 6.67 lakh motorcycles in 2016-17, nearing its installed capacity.

Royal Enfield's product line‐up in India includes Bullet, Classic and Thunderbird models in 350 and 500cc displacement along with Continental GT 535cc café racer and purpose-built Himalayan.

The other two manufacturing units of Royal Enfield are in Thiruvottiyur and Oragadam near Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

With the new production plant, the waiting period of the Royal Enfield bikes is expected to go down. Currently, the motorcycles command a waiting period between four and six months.

The company plans to invest Rs 800 crore in 2017-18 largely towards capacity expansion at Vallam Vadagal, new products and platforms, and technical centres in Leicester, the UK and Chennai, India.

Royal Enfield has been consistently growing in the market. Eicher Motors, makers of Royal Enfield motorcycles, sold 64,459 units in July, a growth of 21 percent over 53,378 motorcycles sold in July 2016, enabling the company's share price to hit a fresh 52-week high of Rs 31,532.

Meanwhile, Royal Enfield is expected to launch the Himalayan BS-IV version soon in India. The new version of the Himalayan is expected to be priced around Rs 1.93 lakh (on-road Mumbai). The bookings for the new Himalayan are already underway at the dealerships of the company.

Royal Enfield had put a break on sales of the Himalayan from April to make way for the new model.