Renault has announced that it will add production of the current Clio to its Revoz plant in Slovenia from February of 2017, according to a Le Monde report. The company currently manufactures the new Clio at its plants in Flins, France and Bursa, Turkey. However, with production of the next-generation Nissan Micra scheduled for the Flins factory Renault needs extra capacity for its best-selling model in the European market.
Significance: Renault is looking to maximise utilisation across its European production network, and Renault will be able to achieve better capacity across its network by moving production of the Clio to the underutilised Revoz plant in Novo Mesto, Slovenia. Currently the Revoz facility manufactures in the region of 130,000 units in its role as the sole manufacturing facility for the Renault Twingo and the Smart ForFour. According to the report, the capacity overflow production capability for the Clio at Revoz will see between 50,000 and 70,000 Clios built in Slovenia, which will take the plant up to its built capacity of 200,000 units. The current Clio has been a strong success for Renault since its launch in 2012 with the model selling 400,000 units across all of Europe in 2015.
