Mazda Plans to Expand Its Production Capacity in China

Mazda Motor Company has recently announced that it wants to expand its production capacity in China, in order to satisfy the increasing demand in the country, as Bloomberg reports.

“We need to expand current capacity when we look into next year and the year after,” Chief Financial Officer Kiyoshi Ozaki was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source. However, Ozaki did not provide exact figures for the company’s plan.

Mazda, which is 11 percent owned by Ford Motor Co, has set a China sales increase target of 22 percent for the present year. This can be translated into a figure of 220,000 vehicles.

The company is present on the Chinese market through 2 partnerships. The first one is a three-way joint-venture with Ford and local partner Chongqing Changan Automobile Co that operates two production sites. The second one is a joint-business with the Chinese company FAW Car Co. Mazda had a total vehicle output of 173,788 units last year.

This Chinese production increase trend has been set by two of Mazda’s rivals, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. Nissan is making a $730,000 investment in an effort to increase its annual vehicle production from the current 430,000 figure to 600,000 units. Honda will spend $168 million to build a second production site in China, scheduled to become operative in the second half of 2012. The factory will be operated in cooperation with Dongfeng Motor Group Co. It will be located close to he existing Dongfeng Honda plant in the Wuhan, Hubei Province.