Nissan will invest US$100mil in Córdoba province for the manufacture of two new models. One could be the 4×4 XTerra. This was announced onFriday during a meeting between Juan Lardiz=E1bal, Director of Institutional Relations of the company, with provincial authorities. The Government from Córdoba attracted the installation to its territory because they are going to give Renault the same benefits that Volkswagen already has. The other three vehicles, one of which is the Frontier, will be manufactured in the plant the French company has in Curitiba, Brazil, which should start operating at the end of next year.
The company said that this investment by Nissan will happen in 2002, which is when Renault’s Japanese partner is planning to start operating in Mercosur. Nissan trades at the moment 4,000 cars annually in Mercosur, and they want to increase their sales to 150,000 units annually in the first decade of 2000. This would give them a market share of around 4%. Nissan does not have its own factories in the region so it will use Renault’s, to whom it has been associated since 1999, when Renault acquired 36.8% of the shares of Nissan’s capital.
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This industrial co-operation between the two companies will be completed by collaboration in the commercial and services sector. In total, Nissan’s implantation in Mercosur will create 600 direct jobs and around 3,000 indirect jobs.
