BMW to build new billion dollar plant in Mexico
July 14, 2014
The BMW Group has announced plans to build a new plant in Mexico, close to the city of San Luis Potosí in the state of the same name.
“Mexico is an ideal location for the BMW Group and will be another important plant within our production network. We will invest one billion US dollars in the new production site over the next few years. Production is planned to start in 2019 and during that year, the workforce will reach around 1,500 people,” stated Harald Krüger, member of the BMW AG Board of Management, responsible for Production.
Over the medium term, several thousand jobs will be created on the plant site and in the surrounding area. The company will announce which BMW models will be built at the San Luis Potosí location at a later date.
“This decision underscores our commitment to the NAFTA region. We have been building BMW cars at our US plant in Spartanburg for the past 20 years. With a planned annual capacity of 150,000 units for the new plant in Mexico, the BMW Group will be even better positioned to take advantage of the growth potential in the entire region,” Krüger added. “The Americas are among the most important growth markets for the BMW Group. We are continuing our strategy of ‘production follows the market’,” he continued.
The BMW Group has operated a local sales company in Mexico since 1994 and sold a total of 13,992 vehicles in the country in 2013. This represents an increase of almost 18.3% over the previous year. Motorcycle sales for the same period reached 2,064 units, up 16.6%.
The BMW Group already announced a further investment of one billion US dollars at its existing plant in Spartanburg, USA back in March of this year. This will increase that plant’s annual production capacity to up to 450,000 vehicles by the end of 2016 and make Spartanburg the largest plant in the BMW Group’s international production network.
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