During a Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of Honda Malaysia’s Number 2 Line at their Pegoh Plant in Alor Gajah, Malacca; Honda Malaysia has just announced that they will roll out the first locally assembled hybrid vehicle by the end of this year in Malaysia, beginning with the Jazz Hybrid.
<!--more-->In attendance of the ceremony was Datuk Seri Haji Mohd Ali bin Mohd Rustam (Chief Minister of Malacca) and Dato’ Sri Mustapa bin Mohamed (Minister of International Trade and Industry - MITI) as well as Hiroshi Kobayashi (President and Chief Executive Officer of Asian Honda Motor Co., Ltd.) and Mr. Yoichiro Ueno (Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Honda Malaysia).
Mr Kobayashi placed great importance on the Southeast Asian region during his speech, indicating that the region’s demand for passenger cars has grown tremendously over the last 10 years with a huge population, strong GDP growth and spending power that’s on the rise.
Hence the reason for Honda Malaysia’s RM350 million investment into the expansion of their Pegoh Plant in Malacca, which is scheduled to begin operations by the end of 2013 and will have a production capacity of up to 100,000 units per annum bringing their total output to 800 vehicles per day, effectively doubling its capacity from what it is today.
In addition, there’s also a recently built RM40 million Pre-Delivery Inspection Centre (PDI) and Vehicle Quality Test Course that was commissioned on 7th July 2012, where the new Vehicle Quality Test Course was designed with different dynamic testing zones and road conditions that can accommodate and fully test 2 new vehicles per session.
Honda Malaysia’s Number 1 Line will concentrate on producing hybrid vehicles, while the Number 2 Line is being built to help cater to the demand of the Malaysian market with the ability to produce multiple models.
Once construction is complete, the entire factory will occupy a total space of 8.48 million square metres, again doubling in size, and Honda Malaysia has also indicated that they will be filling it to the brim with the latest state-of-the-art machinery to ensure that the vehicles they build are of the highest quality to say the least.
Following the completion of the newly expanded plant, there will be roughly 700 new employees joining Honda Malaysia’s fraternity, with plans to further increase the current 40% of local content within Completely Knocked Down (CKD) Honda vehicles for the City, Civic, Accord, CR-V and the Jazz-Hybrid.
Lastly, following the plant’s expansion, Honda Malaysia will also look to increasing their dealer network up to 90 dealers by the end of 2015.
