Maruti Baleno to Roll Out from Gujarat Plant in 2017

Ahmedabad: The Maruti Suzuki Baleno will walk away with the honors of being the first model to roll out from the Suzuki Motor Corporation’s Mehsana Gujarat plant, beginning from January 2017. As much as 85,000 units will roll out from the new facility at Gujarat. 50% of them will be the 1.3-liter diesel engines and the rest of them will be petrol engines. These petrol powertrains will come mated to an automatic transmission.

Similarly, the new Next-gen Swift DZire will also roll out from the Gujarat facility, from 2018. News reports point to a complete takeover of the Baleno by the Gujarat plant from the Manesar plant, which RC Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki India denies. Speculations are that both the Haryana facilities, at Manesar and Gurgaon, will be freed to undertake production of Maruti’s new models.

Currently, the construction work is taking place at the Gujarat facility, which will be ready to manufacture the Baleno by January or February 2017. The total production capacity of the Gujarat facility in its first phase will be 250,000 units.

Both the Baleno and the Vitara Brezza have a longer waiting period of over six to eight months, which the Gurgaon and Manesar plants are expected to meet. Production had to be interrupted at both Manesar and Gurgaon, after a fire broke out at their AC kit supplier Subros’ manufacturing facility at Manesar. So, Maruti substituted its annual maintenance closure to halt production till Subros restored supplies to Maruti.

Maruti’s plans for the Gujarat plant is keeping in view the closer proximity to the Mundra port, from where Maruti has plans of exporting the Baleno to about 100 international markets, as part of the Central Government’s “Make-In-India” programme. Maruti exported the Baleno to Suzuki, in Japan, from the Mundra port in January 2016, after which exports to Europe began in February 2016.

Maruti has met with a positively higher demand for the Baleno and the Vitara Brezza, as about 64000 of the Baleno units have been delivered so far in India. This higher demand, on the flip side, has led to a longer waiting period of 8 months. Contrary to expectations, sales and demand of the petrol version has increased to 60 percent of the total sales of the Baleno. The mid-trim Delta edition is pursued the highest in both the petrol and diesel versions.

In arrangement with vicky.in

– DeshGujarat