Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), the country's leading SUV maker, is ramping up production capacity to over 6 lakh units per annum for its SUVs in the next 12-15 months to cater to long waiting periods. This is a 68 percent hike in capacity from the maker of the highly popular Scorpio and XUV 700, which is  struggling to smoothly cater to a strong order backlog that swelled to 2.6 lakh units at the end of October 2022.

The monthly production capacity is set to increase from 29,000 units in Q2 FY23 to 49,000 units by Q4 of FY24, the company announced on Friday. Between FY22 to FY24, Mahindra & Mahindra had announced an investment of Rs 7,900 crore over a period of three years. 

The above-mentioned manufacturing capacity is being built to cater to continued robust demand for new launches and will crucially help M&M in clearing existing bookings for its products  The company announced today that that the incremental capacity will also help reduce waiting periods of new launches and also meet any uptick in exports as well as mop additional demand on for its bread-and-butter utility vehicle range. 

The Thar's production will increase from 4,000 units a month to 6,000 units a month, the XUV300 from 5,000 units a month to 9,500 units, and the Scorpio N to 10,000 units a month from the current 6,000. Its popular XUV700 SUV, too, will see its production pushed to 10,000 units a month from the current 6,000 units.

 
Rajesh Jejurikar, ED, auto and farm equipment at Mahindra & Mahindra said, "Apart from 2.6 lakh pending bookings, the fresh booking momentum across our models continues. The increase in capex has already been factored in to ramp up volumes and it will help us meet the growing demand. All of these investments have been triggered. " 

For the electric vehicle portfolio, the company will be creating a capacity of 15,000 to 17,000 units a month which accounts for 20-30 percent of the company's total portfolio.

Mahindra & Mahindra claims it is the No. 1 SUV maker in the country in terms of revenues and it even inched ahead in terms of volumes in the month of September. In the July to September 2022 period, the company posted its highest ever quarterly sales at 1.74 lakh units, a growth of over 84 percent in SUV sales.