Toyota to expand diesel-engine production at Thai plant

Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan announced the expansion of diesel-engine production in Thailand.
Siam Toyota Industry Co has been established to develop diesel engines. The expansion of manufacturing facilities is expected to be completed by 2015, with engine production to commence soon after.
The investment will provide diesel engines for the growing car industry in emerging markets under the Innovative International Multi-purpose Vehicle (IMV) project.
The company’s manufacturing plant will be expanded to allow production of another 290,000 engines per year. That will bring Toyota’s total capacity to 610,000 engines per year. The company will be investing approximately ?4 billion (Bt16 billion).
The expansion is expected to require another 450 employees.
Siam Toyota Industry will be producing diesel engines for domestic car assembly plants in Thailand. Thailand has become a leading exporter of cars to a number of emerging markets and the new company will be exporting assembled cars to these emerging markets, as well.
Toyota Motor will support car assembly in the countries that it distributes its vehicles to. Siam Toyota will provide parts along with support and encouragement to begin production of cars in those emerging countries.
Prior to March 2012, Toyota had announced it would invest Bt6 billion to increase production in Thailand under Siam Toyota Industry. The project will be completed in 2014. The report from Toyota Motor also indicated that the company plans to increase the production capacity of Benzene ZR engines for the Toyota Corolla by 100,000 engines per year in Thailand.
Accordingly, Siam Toyota Industry will become the main manufacturer for the assembly of all Toyota car models sold in Thailand as well as for those cars that are exported. The company will focus mostly on producing diesel engine models in order to respond to consumers’ needs. Today, the demand for passenger cars in the Asia-Pacific region is relatively high.
As a result, Toyota sees the importance of increasing the production of benzene engines.
The expansion plan for producing benzene ZR engines will increase the company’s production capability to 840,000 engines per year or 10 per cent of the total global production for these engines.
Bridgestone Corporation, the world’s largest car-tyre manufacturer, also said yesterday that it would invest Bt110 billion (?280 billion) next year to expand manufacturing in emerging markets like Thailand and India.