robin/subaru factory to close

066

066

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2012
Messages
138
Today at work, a sales rep for Honda came in for his monthly visit & told us that the Robin/Subaru factory in Tokyo Japan will be closing down next year, due to the factory not making a profit. He says that Honda world wide are starting to ramp up operations at plants in China, India, Taiwan to meet expected demand as a replacement brand.
I was just wondering if anyone else has heard if this is true....
 
066 said:
Today at work, a sales rep for Honda came in for his monthly visit & told us that the Robin/Subaru factory in Tokyo Japan will be closing down next year, due to the factory not making a profit. He says that Honda world wide are starting to ramp up operations at plants in China, India, Taiwan to meet expected demand as a replacement brand.
I was just wondering if anyone else has heard if this is true....
Click to expand...

I dunno.. Kinda hard to believe being they are the 4th largest engine manufacturer. Just industrial side, not auto included.
 
Which was around about where Tecumseh were when they went down.
Unless there is a revolution in China in the near future all engine makers will either have a factory in China or go to the wall.
 
wow, thats pretty big news for our industry....
 
Well, from the position of the board.
1) to compete you have to make trash because that is all the market will pay for, devaluing the company name
2) you will have to accept uneconomically low profit margins due to subsidised Chineese labour
3) your product has at best 20 years to run before being replaced by electric powered devices
4) legislators continue to pretend to be protecting the enviroment by forcing unrealistic emission requirements on a sector that contributes less than 1% of emissions = unrecoverable developement costs.
5) Auto division provides a substantially higher profit and represents better use of shareholders fund.

It is a no brainer.
They either had to do what B & S has done and secure market share by purchasing the end users of their engines with the long term plan of shifting all production to China or exit the market.

They chose the honourable alternative.
More strength to their arm.

With some luck this might start some conversation & thought in the population that there is a consequence every time they open their wallets.
The unfortunate down side is another few thousand hard working people will be out of work due wholey & solely to the greed & selfishness of others.
 
Stranger things have happened.

Caterpillar abandoned the heavy truck market when they were holding about a 40% market share. They claimed ever increasing emissions regulations were to blame.
 
Unless you are involved in research & development , most have less than no idea about the monumental costs involved and the amount of time needed to find solutions then impliment them.
In many cases it can take decades to recover the costs from the previous upgrade in which time the EPA decides you have to make 2 more.
Because the market is so competiative, no 2 factories will share their research results but no single one can afford to do the research.

Don't know where you got the 40% from, that sound way too high.
Advertisers do all sorts of tricks with figures like setting upper & lower limits that include their most popular engine and exclude their competitors most popular engines.
Or start & end dates for the previous year that includes the oppositions new engine release . Wholesale sales so a switch to their engine ups their figures or retail sales so a switch to a competitors engine is excluded.
I doubt that any manufacturer would ever have 40% of the overall market, then, now or any time in the future unless we end up with only one brand of engine.

A simple example is BSA's claim of 1 in 4 motorcycles were BSA.
This was true at the end of WW II as all of the European factories had been bombed into oblivion so the 4 was basically UK, USA, Canada , Spain & tiny Australia.
Post WW II there was a fuel shortage and most European countries set a size limit between 100 cc to 250 cc. and the USA's biggest factory Indian closed down because Harlies were so cheap they could not compete.
So after WWII it was 1 in 4 motorcycles ( over 100cc )
Then it went to 1 in 4 motorcycles ( over 100cc and excluding scooters ).
Then it went to 1 in 4 motorcycles ( over 100cc and excluding scooters and step throughs )
So right up till the late 60's the BSA group (included Triumph & Ariel by then ) still maintained the false 1 in 4 claim where as by then they were less than 5% of total world production if you included all 2 wheelers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top