Suzuki sell 20,767 units to Europe in first 6 months of current financial yearSuzuki announced that net sales in its motorcycle business decreased by Y15.1 billion (-10.9 percent) to Y123.5 billion year-on-year for the first six months (ending September 30th 2014) of its current financial year (ending March 31st 2015) - mainly due to the decrease it is seeing in Asian sales, according to the company.
However, in the same period it has cut the Y1.0 billion operating loss it saw in 2013 to Y0.2 billion for its second quarter this year.
In motorcycle unit terms, the company sold 573,000 units worldwide in their first six months - 540,000 of which were exported, with 20,000 of those going to Europe and a further 20,000 to North America.
The decrease in Asian sales that the company points to saw them sell 443,000 units in Asia in the first six months of their current financial year, compared to 543,000 for the year ago period.
In other news, Suzuki has decided to relocate the motorcycle assembly undertaken at its Toyokawa plant (Aichi prefecture) to the Miyakoda district located in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka.
The relocation comes as a part of ongoing consolidation of the motorcycle business into the same district as a response to the earthquake and the tsunami, and the decrease in the domestic motorcycle production volume.
Currently, Suzuki’s motorcycle business is dispersed in three different locations: the motorcycle technical centre (located in the Ryuyo district in Iwata, Shizuoka) for the engineering and the development; the Takatsuka plant (located in Minami-ku, Hamamatsu) for the production of the engines; and the Toyokawa plant (located in Toyokawa) for the assembly of the motorcycles.
In the midst of the decrease in the domestic motorcycle production volume, due to the increase in local production for local consumption in overseas markets, Suzuki will consolidate the motorcycle assembly of the Toyokawa plant into the Hamamatsu plant, located in the Miyakoda district, to consistently operate from engineering, development and testing to production of the engines and the powertrain and the assembly.
The end of the production at the Toyokawa plant is scheduled for July 2018. The Toyokawa plant started its production as a motorcycle plant in October 1971.
Suzuki’s domestic motorcycle production volume marked its highest in FY1981 with approximately 1.6 million units; the production volume of the last fiscal year was 180,000 units.
