MALACCA: Honda Malaysia Sdn Bhd's plant here produced its 600,000th unit after just 14 years in operation, said Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Katsuto Hayashi.
He said the addition of the second production line in 2014 has enabled Honda Malaysia to grow at an accelerated rate.
"We achieved 300,000 units in just three years, as compared to 11 years taken earlier to reach the first 300,000 units," Hayashi said at the '600,000 Units Production Ceremony' in Pegoh here today.
Honda Malaysia has two production lines at this plant. The number one line started operations in 2003 and the number two line, in 2014.
The 600,000th vehicle which rolled out was a 'New City', Honda's B-segment model.
With a total area of 202,506 sq m, the Pegoh plant has a flexible production capacity of 50,000 cars per annum at line one, and 100,000 cars per annum at line two.
"With this readily-available facility here, Honda Malaysia has the spare capacity to fulfill bookings from customers as well as produce the best products for Malaysians," Hayashi said.
Currently, Honda has seven models – the Accord, City, Civic, CR-V, Jazz, HR-V and BR-V. They are locally assembled at the Pegoh plant.
Honda Malaysia also celebrated the sale of its 100,000th unit for its current financial year (Honda Global's financial year: April 1, 2016 – March 31, 2017) at the same event here.
Honda Motor Co Ltd's Executive Vice President/Representative Director, Seiji Kuraishi, said Honda Malaysia currently takes the top spot as the country with the highest market share among Honda car operations worldwide for the first two months of 2017.
Honda Malaysia achieved the second-highest market share among Honda's global operations in 2016, with 91,830 vehicles sold; and became the first non-national marque to achieve second position in overall Malaysia's 2016 Total Industry Volume.
Honda Malaysia, an entity under a tripartite partnership between Honda Motor Co Ltd of Japan (51 per cent), DRB-Hicom Bhd (34 per cent) and Oriental Holdings Bhd (15 per cent), was set up in 2000.
Today, it has a staff size of 3,262 people and 88 dealers nationwide. -- BERNAMA