Volkswagen on Monday said it would start local vehicle assembly operations “as a first step towards the long-term development of ASEAN markets in cooperation with [our] Indonesian partner company Indomobil”.
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An agreement for Indomobil to assemble VW models in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta was signed earlier.
“Current trends on world markets clearly show how important the timely development of new growth regions is,” VW Cars sales and marketing chief Christian Klingler said in a statement. “The only way to secure global growth and safeguard jobs is to focus on tomorrow’s markets today.”
Indomobil will begin assembling the Touran MPV (a small minivan) from semi knocked-down (SKD) kits with initial production capacity from next summer of only several hundred units though this is set to rise.
In a further step, CKD [completely knocked-down] production of group vehicles from 2012 is conceivable,” VW said, adding that it plans to expand in the ASEAN region beyond Indonesia and establish the group throughout the region.
Further VW, Skoda, Audi and commercial vehicle models will be added to the range later, the automaker said.
Indomobil Group is the country’s largest auto company and parent to Volkswagen’s exclusive Indonesian distributor PT Garuda Mataram Motor, Reuters reported.
VW already sells the Tiguan compact SUV, the larger Touareg and the Golf GTI performance hatchback in Indonesia, the news agency added. Over 500,000 new cars were sold in Indonesia last year, up from about 435,000 in 2007.
Volkswagen had made clear for some time it wanted to expand in South-east Asia, which it said offered “enormous” growth opportunities, but previously failed to agree a deal with Proton in Malaysia despite prolonged negotiations.
