LAHORE: The motorbikes manufacturing in Pakistan is on the upward move due to fast urbanization and mobility of the people coupled with availability of inexpensive motorcycles by new market players.
During last one decade, the country's motorbikes industry recorded 35 percent growth with 80 percent share of 70cc.
Talking to APP here Sunday, the Atlas Honda Limited (AHL) General Manager (Research and Development), Afaaq Ahmed said that despite penetration of new competitors in the industry since 2001, the manufacturing and subsequent sales of Japanese brand AHL motorbikes were showing steady growth every year.
Though the Company faced tough time due to dwindling manufacturing and sales in early decade of the current century because of new motorcycle brands, the AHL having 50 years of experience had drilled out its way by maintaining quality standards against the new low-cost and low-quality products and managed to raise its sales table.
The AHL never compromised on high quality standards in production that was the key to maintain consumers' confidence, citing, "We capture 47 percent share in the motorcycle market, as the sale ratio of our new and old products is still high." The prices of Japanese brand motorbikes were high mainly because of high input cost and use of fine quality parts of Japanese technology, which guaranteed long life of the product, he responded to a question.
To a question, he said that AHL, a sister company of Atlas Group, was still leader in 70cc and 125cc motorbikes, as it had manufactured one million motorbikes from 1962, when Atlas Group and Honda Motor Company Japan joined hands, to 2001; another one million from 2002-2009 and later on, the company had been manufacturing more than 600,000 units per annum. During last AHL fiscal year 2012-13, ended in March, the company sold out 630,063 units with five percent growth, while, the total production capacity of AHL both at Lahore and Karachi was 750,000 per year, he added.
To a question, Afaaq Ahmed said the AHL regularly adopted technology transfer to Pakistan and currently there existed seven in-house and 12 vendor to vendor technology transfer agreements.
"We have localized 94 percent parts of CD70cc and 85 percent of CG125cc motorbikes, however, the company imports raw material to manufacture these parts locally and the AHL vendors' business is worth Rs 20 billion," he mentioned.
The AHL General Manager (R&D) said that during last few years, the company had launched a new model of 70cc as well as the 100cc bike.
On revenue side, he said, the company recorded Rs. 42.3 billion sales in fiscal 2012-13, up 11.3 percent against Rs. 38 billion sales during 2011-12. Afaaq Ahmad claimed that the Atlas Group had been contributing two percent annually in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in shape of different taxes. The Atlas Group contributed Rs 25 billion in national exchequer for fiscal 2012-13 out of which Atlas Honda contributed Rs. 8.08 billion, he mentioned.
To another question, he said, the AHL provided employment to 3500 individuals at Sheikhupura factory and 1000 at Karachi in addition to hundreds of vendors and dealers.
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