Published by Motown India, October 20, 2014
The Hero MotoCorp Ltd plant at Neemrana in Rajasthan [designed by William McDonough + Partners] has gone on stream. The plant will contribute towards enabling the company to surpass 100 million units in cumulative production by year 2020. The plant will be officially inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Rajasthan Vasundhara Raje Scindia.
The Neemrana plant is Hero’s one-of-a-kind-garden factory. From efficient building envelope, to the Big Foot air handlers, to water and energy optimisation – the Garden Factory demonstrates HMCL’s environmental aspirations.
With this new plant, Hero MotoCorp now has four globally-benchmarked manufacturing units in India – Haridwar in the hill state of Uttarakhand, Gurgaon and Dharuhera in the northern state of Haryana, and Neemrana. The combined installed production capacity of the company has now risen-up to 7.65 million per annum. It is well in course to achieve the stated objective of 12 million annual capacity by year 2020.
Hero MotoCorp is also set to commence construction of its fifth & sixth manufacturing plants in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh respectively. When operational, all these plants – including the ones in Colombia and Bangladesh – will take the total installed capacity of Hero MotoCorp to 12 million units of two-wheelers.
“We believe in giving back to the environment as much as we take from it. And that is why Hero has kept the ’green concept’ in focus while building this ‘Garden Factory’. As leaders in the automotive industry, we fully realise our responsibility as an opinion leader in the fast changing industrial environment. With the knowledge that a cleaner, pollution-free environment is the only way forward, we are ushering in an era of change. Today, we are living up to that commitment by unveiling the first of our ‘Green Concept’ manufacturing unit which will serve as a template for our upcoming production facilities to replicate,” said Pawan Munjal, Vice Chairman, CEO and Managing Director, Hero MotoCorp.
Around Rs 1050 Crore (US$ 175 million) has been put in as initial investment to build this plant.
Adjacent to the plant is Hero MotoCorp’s state-of-the-art Global Parts Centre (GPC) which has automated storage and retrieval system, automated packaging and sorting system, on-line tracking of parts through Warehouse Management System (WMS), lean manufacturing systems and most importantly, a similar Green Building Concept.
Aiming to double its annual turnover to over Rs 3000 Crore in the next two to three years, the GPC is designed to have minimal manual intervention while significantly enhancing productivity.
The new plant will manufacture HMCL’s range of motorcycles and scooters. Going forward, the company has plans to develop high-end two-wheelers from this facility. The current production capacity of the plant is 750,000 units per annum which is likely to go up with rising demand.
HMCL’s new plant was unveiled at Neemrana – just over a year after construction began.