Daimler and the Renault-Nissan Alliance have formed a joint venture company to oversee the building and operation of the Mexican factory that eventually will build Mercedes and Infiniti models.
COMPAS (Cooperation Manufacturing Plant Aguascalientes) is 50/50 owned by Daimler and Nissan which will spend US$1bn on COMPAS to build and run the premium compact vehicle factory.
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The plant will be close to Nissan’s Aguascalientes A2 plant. It will have initial capacity of about than 230,000 vehicles and will create about 3,600 direct jobs by 2020. Additional capacity could be added. Production of Infiniti cars begins in 2017, Mercedes-Benz the following year.
COMPAS is headed by management team from Daimler and Nissan – CEO Ryoji Kurosawa, CFO Uwe Jarosch and chief quality officer (CQO) Glaucio Leite.
Three executives from each company make up the board of directors: M-B compact car production chief Michael Göbel, M-B quality chief Axel Harries, and M-B operations controller Christian Schulz from Daimler.
Nissan executives are: Nissan Mexico manufacturing chief Armando Avila, Nissan North America finance head Carlos Servin and NNA’s customer satisfaction boss Takehiro Terai.
“We are combining the manufacturing expertise of Nissan and Daimler in one production plant in Mexico for the production of next generation premium compact cars,” said Kurosawa.
“Aguascalientes was selected as the location for this new plant thanks to the state’s well established supplier base and Nissan’s track record [since 1966] in highly efficient manufacturing in Mexico.”
Kurosawa has spent 30 years in manufacturing at Nissan and Infiniti and most recently ran the Tochigi plant in Japan.
COMPAS will give Mercedes-Benz Cars its first compact car plant in NAFTA [it has an SUV and C-class plant in Alabama].
Forty years at Daimler, Jarosch was most recently CFO of the Mercedes-Benz cars business in India.
Leite has production and planning experience with Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicles and cars in Brazil and Germany. Most recently he supervised the E-Class production start at Sindelfingen, Germany.
Infiniti executives have said previously the plant will start with the Q30, also destined for UK production.
“Brand identity will be safeguarded as the Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti vehicles will clearly differ from each other in terms of product design, driving characteristics, and specifications,” today’s announcement said.
“Daimler and Nissan will also produce the next-generation premium compact cars at other production locations around the world, including Europe and China.”
