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Fiat Automóveis is to invest 5 billion reais
($2.8 billion) with the major aim of expanding production capacity
at the giant Betim factory near Belo
Horizonte which will turn it into the
largest plant in the Fiat Group worldwide. |
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The
new investment
by Fiat will be spent through 2010, and it comes at a time when the Betim factory is breaking all records in its 31 year long
history of building Fiat cars. |
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Fiat Automóveis is to invest 5
billion reais (US$2.8 billion) in
Brazil with the aim of
expanding further its production
capacity at the giant Betim factory
near Belo Horizonte which will turn
it into the largest assembly plant
in the Fiat Group worldwide.
In total Fiat plans to invest 6.4
billion reais, with 1 billion of
this going to the Case New Holland
plant in the city of Sorocaba near
São Paulo, and 400 million being
spent at Córdoba in Argentina. The
rest of the money, 5 billion reais,
will be spent by Fiat Automóveis,
FPT Powertrain Technologies, Teksid,
Iveco and Magneti Marelli on their
plants spread across the Minas
Gerais region in the cities of Betim,
Contagem, Sete Lagoas and Lavras.
The investment news came from the governor of Minas
Gerais, the region of which Belo Horizonte
is the capital city, Aecio Neves. "The new plant will be Fiat's
largest," he told journalists
after he held a meeting with Fiat CEO Sergio
Marchionne.
The Fiat boss was in Brazil to meet
with the country's President, Luiz Inacio
Lula da Silva yesterday.
The investment
will be spent through 2010 and comes at a time when the Betim factory is breaking all records in its 31 year long
history of building Fiat cars. Fiat Automóveis produced 68,540 units last month adding
up to a total 596,524 vehicles produced since January, a
massive 28.5 percent increase over the production it
accomplished during the same period of 2006.
The Brazilian new car market is booming this year, and just
under two-and-a-half million cars are expected to have been sold by
the end of the year, up 25 percent on last year. Fiat
Automóveis too is on a sales roll, outperforming the domestic
market as it heads towards an estimated 31.5 percent
year-on-year rise. Last month 60,314 Fiat branded vehicles arrived on the
market, the largest volume registered in a single month in
the history of the Italian brand in Brazil. With this
record-breaking result, Fiat extended further its leadership
of sales in the country, with a total of 490,450 automobiles
and commercial light vehicles now having been sold from
January up to the end of October, representing a total
market share of 26 percent.
The giant Betim
plant is presently heaving at the seams, with some paint shop work
for the small van range even being shifted to a nearby Iveco
truck plant. The locally-built B-segment Grande Punto has
recently added to capacity pressure and it has received a strong welcome
ever since its market launch in August, while several key new models in the
pipeline, including the heavily facelifted Siena (2008)
which is due in the showrooms later this year and
the 3-box Linea saloon, due during 2008, are both expected to be in demand
once they hit the market.
by Claudio Perlini
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