Honda Ships More American-made Cars from the U.S. than from Japan

Honda seems to be growing faster in United States than in its native country Japan. In a recent report about the firm’s sales performance Honda has stated that its American production unit has become an export outlet for the first time in 2013. The unit of American Honda has exported 108,705 units of Honda and Acura vehicles, while it imported only 88737 units during financial year of 2013. Honda has four production units in United States spread across Ohio, Alabama and Indiana all of which together with manufacturing facilities in Canada and Mexico made it possible to achieve this feat. This Japanese firm began its automobile manufacturing activities in United States during 1982 and presently total capacities of its plants are above one million units.

Though Honda began its operations in United States to meet local demand it never expected the facilities to grow at such a rapid pace as to meet demand for exports also. The firm has invested above $ 3 million in last four years on its North American production facilities to expand capacity and manufacture both passenger cars and mini trucks for export across both North and South America and also Europe. This kind of financial and technology inputs has helped in increase of total product output in United States at 1,309,917 units in 2013 depicting an increase of 7.4 percent since 2012. The overall production from North America in 2013 was 1,781,213 units showing an increase of nearly 5.3 percent since 2012.

During announcement of these results Honda’s President and CEO for North America stated that the feat has been achieved due to sustained effort and foresight of its management to expand its North American production facilities into export units. They planned output in a way as to meet growing demand for products across northern hemisphere by development of popular products and timing their launch to beat the economic depression. He also attributed this success to efforts of its employees and associates who have reaffirmed their faith in the brand by helping expand it across new territories. Honda’s engineers have also been extremely smart in understanding needs of local markets and international markets and developing products which are suited to specific tastes of each region and maintaining quality across all its range of products.

Unlike European markets and Asian markets which have been going through worst part of economic slowdown, North and South American markets are slowly regaining and demand is growing since early part of 2013. However Honda was the only automaker to sell more than 300,000 units of its three models Accord, Civic and CR-V within United States itself. Though earlier Honda used to import all its products for United States from Japan’s manufacturing units, it now meets this demand and also exports from its North American facilities. During 2013, its Ohio facilities manufactured a total of nearly 1227181 units comprising both passenger cars and light trucks while Alabama unit produced 333,556 units of which nearly 20,466 units were exported to nearly 49 countries. Honda’s production units in Canada and Mexico together produced 471,296 units which manufacture subcompact cars and light trucks.