The smart money should be on the lead-acid motorcycle market if Japanese firm GS Yuasa’s latest tranche of investments is anything to go by.
The company is boosting its lead-acid battery output by 2.3 million units (to 30million) in Indonesia by 2016 as the Asian motorcycle market – especially China and India –expands.
The boost in the motorcycle battery production represents more than three times its automotive increase, which will only rise by 700,000 to 9.6 million units.
To achieve the goals the company invested 35 billion rupiah ($2.6million) on a 8,000 sq. m. plant within its existing Kawarang plant, near Jakarta., to increase production capacity to 16 million units.
Yuasa Battery Indonesia (YBID) is adding a new assembly line at its Tangerang plant following a 15 billion rupiah ($1.1 million) investment. It aims to manufacturer a total of 14 million units with the new line to meet demand.
The company’s Indian affiliate Tata AutoComp GY Batteries Ltd. announced last month it has begun production of 3 AH, 3.5 AH and 5 AH ‘Tata Green Batteries – Velocity Plus’ VLRA batteries for motorcycles at its plant in Ranjangaon in Maharashtra State.
An investment of around 200 million yen ($1.6million) aims to see an initial production capacity of 1.2 million units per year at the Indian plant. A second assembly line to double output is scheduled for 2016.
In 2014 India’s motorcycle sales almost doubled to 16 million vehicles since 2009, making it the second largest motorcycle market after China.
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