Toyota on Tuesday officially opened its expanded technical centre in Zaventem, Belgium, as part of the ‘localisation’ of its European design and engineering operations.
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The centre will focus on the complete upper body development of all future Toyota cars in Europe. To ensure that all vehicles meet the demands of local customers, the centre undertakes body, chassis and electronics design; the selection and testing of materials and components; engine evaluation and the tuning of driveability characteristics.
Costing EUR130m, the centre currently employs 580 people. Toyota’s European purchasing and product engineering activities are also located there, and will continue to grow in step with the automaker’s expanding manufacturing operations and capacity in Europe.
At the opening, Toyota Motor Europe’s president and CEO, Shinichi Sasaki said: “The expansion of our R&D operations is crucial to our future growth in Europe, as it will help ensure that our European customers receive superior quality vehicles that are specifically tailored to their tastes.”
In February 2004, Toyota announced it would invest an additional EUR75m in the centre and hire around 200 additional engineers. The additional investment was divided between new building extensions (EUR30m), and the introduction of new testing and evaluation facilities (EUR45m).
In 2005, of 964,208 vehicles delivered in Europe, Toyota produced 638,000 cars here, along with 588,000 engines and almost 337,000 transmissions at plants in the UK, France, Turkey, Poland and the Czech Republic.
For 2006, Toyota has set a target of exceeding a million sales in Europe and operating at full capacity to produce 806,000 cars, 860,000 engines and 575,000 transmissions at its eight plants.
