TOKYO: Japanese automobile firm Isuzu Motors Ltd is set to build a plant in Alabama in the United States on a 300,000-square-feet plot of land it had bought near Birmingham and start manufacturing mid-size trucks there. The plant is expected to go on stream by 2010.
While the company declined to give any further details, Japanese business newspaper Nikkei said Monday the Japanese truck maker plans to set up the factory at the site with an initial capacity to assemble 5,000 mid-size trucks of four-ton capacity a year. The truck platforms and engines will be imported from Japan. The land, located in Pinson Valley and belonging to Del Monte Corp., was acquired in December 2006.
The company also plans to increase its annual truck sales in the U.S. from the current 30,000 units to 50,000 units by 2010, the newspaper reported.
Isuzu had exited a joint venture with Fuji Heavy Industries in the U.S. in 2002 after selling its 49 per cent stake in a manufacturing facility in Indiana to its partner for $1. Now, as it passed through a lean phase and carried out a major restructuring, it is intending to reestablish the production base in the U.S. so that it can achieve further growth in overseas markets, which now account for nearly 60 per cent of its sales. Its trucks are popular in several Asia-Pacific countries and it has manufacturing facilities in Thailand, India and Ukraine
General Motors, which had been a partner of Isuzu and had a 7.9 per cent stake in the company, had sold the holding in May 2006 for $300 million.
Isuzu had a record $824 million operating profit on $14 billion in sales in fiscal 2006.
