Toyota’s Philippines unit has rolled out the 500,000th vehicle assembled in its Laguna facility and is aiming to get sales back on track to kick-start a year which started with a 26% decline to 3,127 units in January owing to continued parts shortage from a flood-hit Thailand.
Rommel Gutierrez, Toyota Motors Philippines vice-president, said: “We intend to sell 60,000 units this year – 50% [from CKD kits] assembled here and 50% [fully] imported.”
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Facelifted versions of the Avanza and Innova commercial vehicles have been announced and redesigned versions are expected to follow.
Gutierrez said TMPC is also looking forward to a stable supply situation this year after suffering the impact of March 2011’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan and floods in Thailand later last year.
The company remained the market leader in the country last year but sales fell by 4% to 54,593 units, the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines reported. Parts exports fell 4% to US$805m.
TMPC is considering the assembly of a third model on top of the Vios and Innova.
Gutierrez said: “Hopefully, we will have three models to produce locally by 2018 as we raise our sales to 100,000 units a year.”
