Toyota is set to boost output at its plant in northern France to meet booming European demand for its cars, despite higher wage costs, a French media report said on Thursday.
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According to Reuters, La Tribune newspaper said Toyota Motor Manufacturing France was about to hire another 1,000 staff and would soon add a four-wheel-drive version of the [redesigned] Yaris model [now] being built in the factory at Onnaing, near Valenciennes.
Factory spokesman Nicolas Fayot declined to confirm or deny the report when asked by the news agency but said it was “friendly” and that, faced with rising demand for Toyota cars in Europe for several years, it would be logical to increase capacity in Valenciennes.
“Toyota will unveil its plans about the Yaris-II at the Frankfurt Car Show on September 12. I cannot comment on investments or capacity before then,” he told Reuters. He added he knew nothing about a new 4×4, apart from a [redesigned] RAV4 that is not going to be built in Valenciennes.
While declining to comment directly on staffing plans, he told Reuters an increase of 1,000 staff would be very large.
The news agency noted that Toyota Motor Europe’s head office in Brussels also declined to comment ahead of the Frankfurt show, a key industry event. “We have strictly no comment on the topic (the La Tribune report). In Frankfurt you can expect more,” a spokesman said.
Reuters said the Valenciennes plant employs about 3,030 workers and produced 204,000 vehicles in 2004.
It quoted La Tribune as saying that the new Toyota 4×4 was due for launch in 2007, and would use the same platform as the redesigned Yaris that the Valenciennes plant had started to manufacture.
Reuters noted that Toyota’s RAV4 SUV was the best selling 4×4 car in France in the first six months of 2005, and demand is booming for sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), despite their high fuel consumption in a time of record oil prices.
It added that Renault , is also due to unveil a 4×4 at the Frankfurt show, but the model will be built at the Renault Samsung factory in South Korea using the platform of Nissan’s X-Trail SUV.
The news agency also noted that PSA Peugeot Citroen in July signed a deal with Mitsubishi to produce new 4×4 models in Japan.
Toyota created 500 new jobs at Valenciennes when it moved the Yaris production to three shifts in May 2004, and at the time said output could be raised to 240,000 units per year, Reuters added.
La Tribune reportedly said the group aimed to sell 250,000 units of the new Yaris per year. Valenciennes, centrally located for the French, Benelux and German markets and near the port of Antwerp, started Yaris production in January 2001.
Most Japanese automakers offer at least one 4×4 version in their volume model lines in their domestic market. Such models sell well in Japan’s northern ‘snowbelt’ regions.
Both Subaru and Suzuki have sold similar 4×4 models (e.g. Subaru’s Justy and Suzuki’s Swift) in relatively low volume in Europe but Toyota has never seriously entered such a niche market here.
