It was in 2019 when news surfaced that Honda Cars India might shut down one of its production facilities to streamline the business. And now, it seems, that moment has arrived. According to a new report, the Indian arm of the Japanese carmaker has discontinued manufacturing operations at its facility in Greater Noida. Although the plant produced the City, CR-V and the Civic there in November, there has been no production whatsoever in December 2020.

Has Honda shut down the entire premises? No. The corporate office and the R&D department continue to run. The production facility, which ran for two decades, employed about 2,000 people. As things stand, the company has approximately 1,000 permanent employees working out of the location. The rest either opted for VRS, which stands for Voluntary Retirement Scheme, or got themselves relocated to Honda’s other manufacturing plant in Tapukara, a town close to Alwar in Rajasthan.

The production facility in Greater Noida started with an annual production capacity of 30,000 units. As Honda began to grow, the plant was upgraded to manufacture up to 100,000 units per year. The facility played helped Honda to become India’s third-biggest carmaker back in July 2014. It leapfrogged Mahindra to bag that position, and in FY15, it had a market share of nearly 7 per cent. Presently, Honda’s share in India has shrunken down to about 3 per cent.

With the said plant now shut, Honda’s Tapukara facility will make better use of its 180,000 units per annum production capacity. Apart from the three models mentioned above, Honda also offers three sub-4 metre models – the Amaze, Jazz and the WR-V. Earlier this year, Honda introduced the all-new City, which sells alongside the four-gen, petrol-only version. Next year, the company will introduce the refreshed Amaze and, hopefully, a compact SUV to compete with the Hyundai Creta, Nissan Kicks and the Kia Seltos.

Story source: ETAuto