Mazda on Tuesday (2 July) announced plans to increase ‘Skyactiv’ manual and automatic transmission production capacity at its Hofu Plant in Yamaguchi, Japan.
Capacity, currently 750,000 units a year, will be increased to 1.14m units in July 2014 in response to growing global sales.
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The automaker will add machining and assembly lines in an affiliated company’s building located on the site. Preparations begin later this month with the installation of production equipment such as multifunction machining centres.
A signing ceremony for the capacity increase was held at Hofu City Hall today.
Hofu plant chief Nariaki Uchida said: “Operations began at the [plant] in December 1981, and it is now Mazda’s chief transmission production facility.”
Despite ending US manufacturing last August, Mazda is boosting production elsewhere as it plans on reaching global sales of 1.7m annually by 31 March 2016.
Eighty percent of those vehicles are expected to have so-called Skyactiv technology.
The automaker will also build a new transmission plant in Thailand with capacity of around 400,000 units. Operations there are expected to begin in the first half of fiscal 2015/16.
Skyactiv transmissions were first installed in the Axela (3 overseas) introduced in Japan in 2011 and they are now available in five different models.
