Honda evaluates new factory in Brazil

With the unit of Sumaré, São Paulo State, within the limits of production capacity, Honda began to evaluate a second car factory in Brazil and already has more than ten cities as candidates to receive the investment.
The automaker has had to seek other options because it says do not have space for a big expansion in Richmond. Still no resolution on the matter, but a number of factors holding down the Japanese multinational to carry out the project.
Among them, Honda needs more capacity to take advantage of a market that is moving to the House of 5 million cars a year by 2020, which equates to an average annual growth of more than 4%. Almost a year ago, the factory has been operating with two extra hours in the workday to daily record sales in the country. As the line has already reached the maximum capacity, the production of trademark is limited to 140 thousand cars a year, only 3% above the record registered in 2012, of 136 thousand cars manufactured in the country. The volume is also insufficient to the ambitious goal of trademark to sell 1 million vehicles in five years, or 200 thousand units every 12 months.
Moreover, imports, that would be the way to complement local production, are affected by restrictive government policies and prevent Honda from reaching all of your potential sales. The automaker, for example, had hoped to topple 37 thousand cars of the new generation of the CR-V sport utility, but import quotas for vehicles produced in Mexico-where does the model-restrict that amount in less than 10 thousand vehicles.
"We need to grow, and of course, we are studying deeply this possibility [to invest in new plant]," says Masahiro Takedagawa, President of Honda in South America, which yesterday received the value in a hotel in the South of the State capital for his first interview to the press after two years in Office.
In Richmond, which produces cars for more than 15 years, the Honda factory occupies only 10% of an area of 1.7 million square meters. But the company says it is with little room for expansion when the Green preserved area and patio and parking spaces as a car, in addition to the technological Center and a new administrative headquarters, two buildings that will occupy the land until 2014.
57 years and Economist born in Tokyo, Takedagawa says that deals with this plan from April 2011, when it came to Brazil to take the helm of Honda in the region. Since then, reports, evaluated "several" States and cities. Following the traditional discretion of Japanese organizations, he said only that the number of sites evaluated more than a dozen.
Takedagawa responds either by car Division as in the area of motorcycles, a market in which he is proud to say that Honda "created and mastered" in Brazil-the brand accounts for 80% of emplacadas motorcycles in the country. According to him, having these two arms has been important for the subsidiary balance their results. An example of this was the last year's performance: while sales of bikes fell 19.5%, Honda is, along with the Renault Nissan, among the brands that have grown up in the car and light commercial market. The increase of 45.3% was plates issued to 135 thousand cars.
At the time, the group goes through a deep internal reorganization, whose goal is to streamline the decision-making and improve communication between departments, as well as to bring the Honda to a distribution network that is next to the interior of the country. In this sense, all administrative areas, today installed in the Morumbi neighborhood, in the southern area of São Paulo, will be transferred, in the second half of 2014, for a single building to be erected in the industrial park of Sumaré. The change will involve 400 to 500 employees of departments such as sales, procurement, administrative, engineering and product development. In Sao Paulo, will be only the arm of financial services and sales of motorcycles.
To make decision-making more fluid in the Organization, the company was already creating management structures within each of the branches in South America, giving them greater autonomy in management. At the same time, began to develop regional offices in five cities in Brazil-Sao Paulo (SP), Sorocaba (SP), Recife (PE), Santa Fe (PA) and Brasilia-to participate with greater proximity to the development of the concessionaires.