New Delhi: Royal Enfield, the motorcycle division of Eicher Motors, is looking to enter new markets in Latin America and South East Asia in the next three years as it seeks to expand its presence in the emerging markets.
The Chennai-based firm, which makes various popular motorcycle models including Bullet, Classic, Thunderbird and Continental GT, is also looking to scale up its production capacity to around 4 lakh units at its two facilities in Tamil Nadu by next year-end.
“Besides the developed markets, we are also looking to expand in the emerging markets in the next 1-3 years. We are looking to enter markets in Latin America and South East Asia,” Eicher Motors Ltd MD and CEO Siddhartha Lal told reporters in a conference call.
The company is already selling bikes in various developed markets including the US, UK, Europe, Japan and Australia and has also appointed a distributor for the Colombian market, he added.
“We have large ambitions in Colombia, where we have already appointed a distributor. We will be opening showrooms there before the end of this year,” Lal said.
Elaborating further, he said that there is small but growing market for mid-sized motorcycles in Latin America.
“The market is largely underserved. Our endeavour is to fill the gap for mid-sized motorcycles in these markets,” Lal said.
When asked about the expansion of production capacity, he said: “We had projected a production capacity of 2.8 lakh units for 2014 but we are all set to surpass that and touch 3 lakh units mark by the end of the year. We plan to touch 4 lakh units per annum mark by 2015 end.”
The enhanced capacity would ease waiting period for the company's motorcycles. There is a waiting period of around 5 months on an average currently on the company's products.
The company is in the process of investing Rs 600 crore on various activities including capacity expansion and development of new global product platforms over 2014 and 2015.
Royal Enfield had produced a total of 1.78 lakh bikes in 2013.
Commenting on VE Commercial Vehicles business, Lal said the company would be launching the Pro 6000 series trucks during the current quarter. The company has already introduced Pro 1000 and Pro 3000 series of trucks and buses across the country.
