Honda is a major manufacturer that makes its own lawn mower engines, with its main production hub based at the Honda Power Equipment Manufacturing facility in Swepsonville, North Carolina. The Japanese company started building engines in the 1950s, beginning with its small H-Type, which quickly became popular on farms and in all sorts of businesses that needed dependable machines. When the 1970s came around, Honda introduced generators, tillers, and some of the most powerful outboard boat engines to the U.S. market, and added lawn mowers to the lineup in 1979. Unlike other brands that buy most of their engines from outside suppliers, Honda builds the engines for its own products, and sometimes even works with other companies, like General Electric.
The brand’s current goal is to supply power equipment to meet increased global demand, with its strategy hinging on two distinct engine series. The GC and GCV lines are geared to homeowners who need light, quiet, and easy-to-use machines, while the GX and iGX engines are built for professionals needing a longer service life and a durable build. This method allows Honda to meet different market needs without having to compromise quality.
Honda’s U.S. engine production hub
The Honda Power Equipment Manufacturing, LLC, head office is based in Alpharetta, Georgia. However, the manufacturing facility for the division, which opened in 1984, is located in Swepsonville, North Carolina. The 375,000-square-foot facility has over 600 employees and produces 2 million engines and nearly 800,000 finished products every year. It’s the only site in the world that builds Honda’s GC and GCV engines, found in Honda’s residential lawn mowers, helping them rank among the top mowers by major brands. The factory also has single-stage snow blowers and exports hundreds of thousands of products annually to markets around the world.
A major advantage of Swepsonville is its blend of research and development, together with production. Honda built its R&D Americas center next to the factory, so it would be easier for design and assembly teams to collaborate seamlessly. With the two departments being close together, it speeds up the transition from prototype to mass production, as seen with the HRN Series lawnmower, which was developed and tested at the R&D center before going directly into production at the adjoining factory.
A global manufacturing network
Outside the U.S., Honda has major production plants in Thailand and China, with each being capable of building around 2 million engines per year. In addition to that, more comes from factories in India, Japan, and Brazil, which contribute to hundreds of thousands worldwide. This global network guarantees that a steady supply of engines is available across multiple regions, reducing the risk of shortages and cutting shipping distances to customers.
Swepsonville remains an important asset in building reliable Honda engines, while other facilities reinforce worldwide production and handle broader product ranges. Combined, all of these sites form a multi-continental system that balances specialization with high-output capability. The scale of this network, together with Honda’s practice of keeping engine production in-house, helps the company maintain consistent standards of quality while satisfying demand from both homeowners and professional landscapers around the globe.