Despite Capacity Crunch Maruti Plans For Ignis, Baleno RS And New Swift

By Siddharth Vinayak Patankar

1 mins read

Published on August 3, 2016

Highlights

The Ignis and Baleno RS will launch in India as per schedule
The New-Gen Swift might be made in India too
The company is trying to ramp up production to curb long waiting periods

The Vitara Brezza has seen bookings crossing 100,000 units and the Baleno, Ciaz and S-Cross remain strong sellers, with long waiting periods now emerging across all these models. Maruti says there is very little it can do to change this scenario, though it is trying hard to find ways to help. Speaking to NDTV, RS Kalsi, Executive Director, Marketing and Sales at Maruti Suzuki says "We feel bad, embarrassed as we don't want the customer to wait for so long. We are focusing on capacity enhancement. Baleno started at 8000 units per month production, and is now moving to 12,000. Vitara Brezza started at 8,000 and has already crossed 10,000 units. With the starting of the Gujarat plant next year, these problems will be resolved." The company admits there is an effort to eke out a few more units of production from each of the current assembly line operations across its plants. Maruti Suzuki Baleno RS Also Read: New-Gen Suzuki Swift Images Revealed Maruti is gearing up for Gujarat to come on-stream before the end of the current fiscal. It will only ramp up initially smaller production to full capacity over the subsequent few months. Kalsi adds, "Gujarat plant will have capacity of 3 lines over a period of time. Each line would have 250,000 units capacity." The company says it is accelerating the ramp up plan at Gujarat already. Next-Gen Suzuki Swift Next year also sees the imminent arrival of another massive volumes product for the brand - the next generation Swift hatchback, that is likely to be made in India for multiple global markets too. In July the company saw its highest domestic sales ever for a month at 1,37,116 units. The Vitara Brezza sold over 10000 units, the Baleno close to 9000 and the Ciaz sold 5000 units. A booking for all three models remain strong, and even the S-Cross has a waiting period now. So expect long delays and waiting periods to continue for the popular Maruti models for some months to come.