BMW has, at long last, confirmed it will build a EUR200m (US$261m) car assembly plant in Brazil, scheduled to start production in 2014.
The automaker had been holding off on its decision for months, pending a federal government administration announcement about import quotas for automakers willing to establish manufacturing operations in Brazil. A company source told just-auto back in July the chance of a plant being confirmed soon was about 80%.
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Last week, finance chief Friedrich Eichiner said: “We are on track and will now submit an investment plan [to] the Brazilian government” but did not provide details of the size of the investment.
Finally, plans for the new factory were presented to Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in the capital, Brasilia, yesterday (22 October) by BMW’s sales and marketing head Ian Robertson.
Subject to final government approval, the plant will have capacity for about 30,000 vehicles a year, creating around 1,000 direct jobs as well as additional employment within the well estabvlished supplier network.
It turns out that just-auto‘s local correspondent’s location pick was accurate – in July he wrote: “Brazilian Henning Dorsnbusch, president of BMW in Brazil, keeps scouting for plant sites. He was recently in Joinville, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, for a conference. This city is heavily industrial, has a strong German expat community and very probably would be the right choice.”
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By GlobalDataToday, BMW said: “Negotiations with the state government of Santa Catarina are already well under way for the new facility in the Joinville region.”
Robertson added: “Brazil is a market with tremendous potential for the future for the BMW Group. For that reason, we are strengthening our long-term commitment to this country.
“This will create the necessary conditions for us to maintain the balance of sales between Europe, Asia and the Americas – and, therefore, for the long-term success of our company. With this move, the BMW Group is applying its strategic principle of ‘production follows the market’, which has already proved successful in markets such as the US, China and India.”
The new plant in Brazil will expand the group’s production network of 29 production and assembly facilities in 14 countries. The company has been manufacturing motorcycles at Manaus since 2010.
BMW has had a local sales company in Brazil since 1995 and sold 15,214 vehicles there last year, up 54% on 2010. BMW Motorrad increased motorcycle sales 55% to 5,442.
