Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (MMC) on Wednesday (11 July) said it had agreed to sell its Born plant in the Netherlands to a Dutch group for one euro and would book a JPY28bn loss on the deal this fiscal year.
The buyer of Netherlands Car (NedCar) is bus maker VDL Groep of Eindhoven.
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Last February, MMC reviewed its global production operation structure and decided not to allocate a new model to NedCar from 2013.
“Since then, MMC had carried out discussions with the related parties to explore the possibility of the future continuation of NedCar while making it a top priority to assure the employment of its entire employees. As a result, MMC has reached a principal agreement with VDL on the share transfer,” the automaker said in a statement.
The sale will allow Mitsubishi Motors to focus more on emerging markets, where growth is projected to be higher than in developed nations, Reuters noted. The automaker has started new production lines in Indonesia and Thailand this year and is studying increasing production in China and Brazil.
“As a result of talks which prioritised the handover of all current employees of NedCar, we have basically agreed on this,” Mitsubishi Motors said in a statement cited by the news agency.
NedCar builds the Colt subcompact and the Outlander sport utility vehicle but accounted for less than 5% of MMC’s global output of 1.1m vehicles in the fiscal year to last March. NedCar’s output had slumped to 50,000 vehicles per year compared with a peak capacity of 200,000.
BMW has said it was considering building Minis at NedCar and Japanese public broadcaster NHK has reported that VDL was set to start producing small cars at the plant for BMW. Mitsubishi Motors’ statement made no reference to BMW.
NedCar, located in the southern town of Born near the borders with Belgium and Germany, started in 1991 as a three-way venture between Mitsubishi Motors, Volvo AB and the Dutch government. Mitsubishi Motors became the sole shareholder in 2001 after buying out its partners. The plant can trace its history back to the Dutch DAF car operation which Volvo bought out.
Mitsubishi Motors’ sales in Europe reached 340,000 vehicles in 2007/08 but slipped to 218,000 in 2011/12, according to Reuters.
