Toyota plans to build its second assembly plant at the Gateway Industrial Estate in Chachoengsao with an investment of Bt12 billion in order to raise capacity for passenger cars including the Eco Car, which will be launched during the third quarter of the year. This will raise production at the Gateway complex from 220,000 to 300,000 units per year.
In fact, Toyota has plans to invest as much as Bt20 billion to build a new plant in order to raise capacity to 1.2 million units per year within the next five years, and promote Thailand as its regional and global production hub.
Tanada said late last year that he was highly satisfied with two major issues that has been successfully completed, leaving the last hurdle of pushing Thailand to its highest limits.
The Gateway investment will raise Toyota's production capacity in Thailand close to one million units within the next two years. It is also planning to expand the Ban Pho plant in Chachoengsao, which manufactures vehicles from the IMV 2 project as well as other models.
This will give Toyota a capacity of 1.2 million units within the next five years, he said.
Last year Toyota also announced that it would spend Bt16 billion to produce diesel engines for the new Hilux pickup and Fortuner PPV. The engine plant is expected to be completed in 2015.
It can easily be said that as much as 40 per cent of the trillions of investment that took place during the last five decades in the Thai auto industry belongs to Toyota, and this also reflects Thailand's importance to this giant auto maker, as a major global production and export hub.