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Mitsubishi Motors builds a new engine plant in Thailand |
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Mitsubishi Motors Thailand Co., Ltd. has invested 290 million baht to expand its engine factory in Thailand to meet the rising production of Mitsubishi cars and trucks locally and worldwide. The almost completed factory is near the old one in Laem Chabang, Chon Buri, the company's vehicle production centre. The new factory's capacity was increased by 26% to 240,000 units a year and commercial production began on April 20. The new plant is being used to assemble and produce engines and power train components for the domestic and export market. It has adopted a new high productivity engine assembly line with up-to-date machine to manufacture state-of-the-art products. “Our accomplishment here would not have been possible without the support of the Thai people, especially the government sectors who support our infrastructure and automobile industry policy and work hard of our local management and staff who dedicate and continue endeavor to produce the high quality product. We are confident that the additional investment here will bring benefits to the company and Thailand,'' Michiro Imai, President of Mitsubishi Motors (Thailand) said. The company has long been a producer of a wide range of automobile engines. Today, it produces both advanced diesel and gasoline engines. They are installed in cars and pickup trucks and exported to its parent company in Japan. Mitsubishi was the first car company to export automobiles from Thailand in 1988. Its cumulative exports of Thai-made pickup trucks reached one million units last October. Now Mitsubishi is optimizing its vehicle production facility to cope with the robust export and local domestic demand. It also plans to add passenger pickup vehicles (PPV) as part of its global strategic model selection to its lineup.
Plans
for Mitsubishi PPV production, possibly to be based on the Triton pickup
truck platform, are still on track. The new model is expected to be
launched in the fourth quarter of this year. In line with the capacity
increase, it has also leased a neighbouring site of 200 rai (320,000 sq.
m) for logistics purposes and started using part of it as motor pool in
February. |
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ASEAN Autobiz, May 2008 |
