CHENNAI: Three automobile plants owned by Ashok Leyland in Tamil Nadu will be temporarily closing its operations in this month due to continued weak demand of its products, according to a company statement.
This has been caused because of the massive slump in the automobile sector for the past three months. Among these, two plants are located in Hosur while the third is located at Ennore in North Chennai.
Ashok Leyland in its regulatory filing before the National Stock Exchange of India has stated that its Ennore plant will be observing 16 non-working days while its two plants in Hosur and Cab Press and Panel Shop (CPPS) will be observing five non-working days.
Other than these, three plants in the rest of India will also be shut temporarily, said a statement from the company on Monday. These include the plant at Alwar in Rajasthan which will be closed for 10 days, Bhandara plant in Maharastra for 10 days and Pantnagar in Uttarakhand for 18 days.
This comes after Ashok Leyland reported a 28 per cent decline in total sales at 10,927 vehicles in July as against 15,199 units in the same month last year. Total domestic sales were at 10,101 units last month as compared to 14,205 units in July 2018, down 29 per cent, the company said in a statement.
It is learnt that sales of medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, excluding buses, more than halved in August as transporters deferred purchases. This is because they have been struggling with excess capacity owing to a slowing economy and consumption slowdown.
The overall volume at India’s top four medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicle makers, which include Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Volvo Eicher and Mahindra & Mahindra fell 59.5 per cent to 31,067 units during the same month compared to last year.
Chennai-based automobile majors have been hit including Ashok Leyland, VS Motors, Hyundai, Daimler and other auto majors. Auto component manufacturer Lucas-TVS, part of the diversified conglomerate TVS Group and Sundaram-Clayton Ltd, a leading supplier of aluminium die-cast products, had also announced non-working days for its employees due to the industry slowdown last month.
The slump has also hit Chennai-based TVS Motor Company whose sales have dwindled with the company registering sales of 279,465 units in July 2019 as against 321,179 units in the month of July 2018. The sales in scooters and motorcycles have been hit so has been the exports.