BMW pondering first Latin America plant?

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Filed under: Plants/Manufacturing, BMW, South America

BMW may be planning to set up a new manufacturing facility in Brazil. The automaker currently only sells around 10,000 units per year in the South American country, but BMW has seen sales leap by 50 percent annually in the market for the past few years. According to Reuters, standards of living in Brazil are increasing at a rapid pace as the country prepares to host both the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Those increases have helped to fuel light vehicle sales, which ticked up by 11 percent in 2010 to 3.33 million units. That figure surpasses even Germany's appetite for passenger cars.

If BMW does decide to set up camp in the southern hemisphere, odds are the company will simply outfit its Manaus motorcycle manufacturing facility to handle assembly of completely knocked-down vehicle kits, at least at first. Should sales increase by leaps and bounds, Reuters reports that BMW would consider a full-fledged manufacturing facility to help satiate demand. The company says that sales of as little as 50,000 units could make such a move worthwhile.

[Source: Reuters]BMW pondering first Latin America plant? originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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