Daimler AG CEO Dieter Zetsche has announced that the company plans on investing over USD170m in its main Argentine manufacturing facility to develop a new line of commercial vehicles for the Latin American market. The investment is expected to create 850 new jobs at the Centro Industrial Juan Manuel Fangio plant in Buenos Aires, increasing that facility's roster by nearly 40%. "In the next few years, we will invest more than USD170m in the Juan Manuel Fangio plant here in Buenos Aires in order to prepare it for the production of new bus, truck, and van models," said Mr Zetsche, as quoted by MarketLine. "With this investment, we are highlighting the fact that Daimler is one of the leading commercial vehicle manufacturers in Argentina and also one of the region's key employers."
Significance: The plant is slated to get a new mid-sized van, the Atron 1624 and 1634 heavy duty trucks, and the LO915, OF1722, and OH1518 bus chassis models. The plant already assembles the Sprinter commercial van, as well as truck and bus chassis. The commercial vehicle market in Latin America has been slowly growing with the expansion of local economies, with the exception of the period of the Great Recession interrupting that progress. But with the Olympic Games coming to Brazil in 2016, the thought is that a boom in construction and public transport in that country and across the region could spur heavy truck sales, and many manufacturers want to be prepared for that possibility.
