Yesterday, India’s passenger vehicle market leader Maruti Suzuki announced that it was extending its plant shutdown to May 16. Now, the country No. 1 two-wheeler company Hero MotoCorp, which had halted plant operations temporarily in a staggered manner for four days from April 22-May 1, extended the same till May 9, has extended the six-plant shutdown to May 16.

Operations at its Global Parts Center (GPC) in Neemrana and its R&D facility – the Centre of Innovation and Technology (CIT) in Jaipur – are also suspended.

Hero MotoCorp has a total of five plants in the country – Haridwar (Uttarkhand), Dharuhera (Haryana), Gurgaon (Haryana), Neemrana (Rajasthan), Vadodara (Gujarat) and Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh) – with a cumulative capacity of 11.6 million units per annum.

The company says the extension of the plant shutdown is to break the chain of the spread of Covid-19. It is continuously monitoring the situation and is ready with its business continuity plans to be able to quickly resume and scale up operations as and when the situation improves. 

Clearly, the growing number of plant shutdowns in the country as well as many key states in lockdown mode including Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka, India Auto Inc is set to see a very poor May 2021 in terms of production and sale of vehicles.