Toyota Motor Corporation announced today that it will invest $450m (49 billion yen) in building a new vehicle plant in Malaysia to capitalise on market growth there.
The Japanese firm plans to reorganise production in Malaysia: an existing passenger vehicle plant will switch to making commercial vehicles only, while the new plant will make only passenger vehicles when it comes on line in 2019.
Toyota Managing Officer, Tatsuro Takami (Toyota Motor Corp)
Toyota has been making vehicles in the country since 1968, and hopes that splitting the production of passenger and commercial vehicles will ramp up productivity.
"This plant is another of our efforts to create new, competitive plants, following the decisions made last year to create a new plant in Mexico and a new line in China, and the opening of two new engine plants this year in Indonesia and Brazil," said Toyota Managing Officer, Tatsuro Takami.
"In addition to introducing cutting edge production technologies, we will dedicate ourselves to developing the personnel who support the making of ever-better cars."
Set to be built in Klang, in the state of Selangor, the new plant will have an annual production capacity of 50,000 vehicles.