Indus Motors halts production for 11 days

KARACHI: Facing serious hardships in importing raw materials for its cars, Pakistan’s leading car manufacturing company, Indus Motor Company Limited (IMC), has decided to temporarily shut down its production plant from December 20-30. The production of its vehicles would be closed for the mentioned period.

In an announcement made to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Monday, the company secretary said, “State Bank of Pakistan has introduced a mechanism for obtaining prior approval for import of CKD kits and components of passenger cars for the auto sector. The delay in aforesaid approvals for the company and its vendors has created hurdles in import and clearance of consignments for raw materials and components of the company.”

This he said has “resulted in insufficient inventory level” and consequently “created an adverse impact on the supply chain and production activities”. Therefore the company was unable to continue its production activities.

He added, “in the light of the above, the company has decided to completely shut down its production plant from December 20, 2022 to December 30, 2022 (both days inclusive).” IMC is a joint venture between certain companies of House of Habib of Pakistan, Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) and Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC) of Japan. Incorporated in 1989, the company manufactures and markets Toyota brand vehicles in Pakistan.

These include several variants of the flagship ‘Corolla’ and ‘Yaris’ in the passenger car segment, ‘Hilux’ in the light commercial vehicle segment and ‘Fortuner’ in the sports utility vehicle segment.

Over 31 years, since its inception, IMC has sold more than 961,500 CBU/CKD vehicles. It has also demonstrated impressive growth in terms of volumetric increase. From a modest beginning of 20 vehicles per day production in 1993, the daily production capacity of the company has now increased to 288 (with overtime) units per day. The company has a workforce of around 3,000 employees and a strong network of 50 independent 3S dealerships spread across the country. It has 52 local vendors that supply parts.

Among auto assemblers, IMC was the only scrip that registered an increase on Monday. Its scrip went up 0.66 percent to close at Rs997.41/share. Total volumes were 15,635 shares. Last day’s close price was Rs996.75/share.

For the quarter ended September 30, 2022, IMC posted a massive decline of 76 percent in its net profit, which stood at Rs1.30 billion compared to Rs5.4 billion in the same quarter last fiscal.