Mahindra to halt production in India for three days this month

Mahindra has announced that it will be observing ‘No Production Days’ at its automotive plants across the country, this month. Manufacturing at the company’s facilities in Chakan, Nashik and Haridwar will be halted for three months and will be applicable for both its passenger and commercial vehicles. 

Mahindra released a statement in its BSE filing saying, "As part of aligning its production with sales requirements, (Mahindra & Mahindra) would be observing no production days at the company's automotive plants for up to three days during the remaining period of May, 2014. The management does not envisage any adverse impact on availability of vehicles in the market due to adequacy of vehicle stocks to serve the market requirements.” 

The automotive industry in India has been facing a decline in sales since many months and Mahindra has blamed the lack of demand for this step. Mahindra has been registering a negative growth since a few months now. Despite the reduction of excise duties in the Interim Budget, which led to cut in prices of vehicles, Mahindra saw a decline of 13 per cent in passenger vehicles and 19 per cent for the commercial vehicles. This low demand had led to the Mumbai-based manufacturer announcing similar ‘No Production Days‘ in January, earlier this year.

To counter this low demand, Mahindra has been taking many steps like expansion of service network in urban and rural areas to improve customer satisfaction. It is also planning to launch new products like the Scorpio facelift, Bolero facelift as well as a new compact SUV developed jointly with Ssangyong.