Toyota is adding another vehicle assembly plant in India to meet growing domestic demand and boost exports to nearby countries.
The world’s largest automaker announced the new factory will create about 2,800 jobs and be built in the Indian state of Maharashtra at an industrial site more than 300km inland from Mumbai.
Toyota aims to start production with its local partner of a new, as yet unspecified SUV model there by the first half of 2029 at an initial rate of 100,000 vehicles a year.
The new facility will join two existing plants in India and a third, due to start up later this year, that Toyota operates with partner Kirloskar Group.
Those factories are located near Bengaluru in southeastern India.
With the additional capacity of the new plant in Maharashtra, Toyota’s annual production in India will increase to about 500,000 vehicles, a company spokesperson said.
The Japanese carmaker plans to open as many as three more plants in India, Japan’s Nikkei news service reported earlier this month, boosting capacity to more than one million vehicles by the early 2030s.
The Tokyo-based Toyota spokesperson said that the report was speculative.
Toyota Kirloskar Motors sales rose 19% to a record 388,801 units last year, including a 42% gain in exports to more than 37,000 vehicles.
Overall, new car sales in India grew 5% last year to a record 4.49 million passenger vehicles, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.
Exports surged 16% to a new high of 863,000 passenger vehicles, buoyed by shipments to Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
India is South Africa’s largest vehicle import market, accounting for just over 50% of the foreign-made cars that make it to the tip of Africa, according to the Automotive Business Council.
This includes several Toyota models, as Toyota has a partnership with another Japanese carmaker, Suzuki, to sell rebadged versions of the latter’s vehicles.
Examples of this include the Toyota Starlet Cross (Suzuki Fronx), Toyota Starlet (Suzuki Baleno), and the Toyota Urban Cruiser (Suzuki Grand Vitara).
All of these vehicles are assembled by Toyota and Maruti Suzuki in India, which means it’s very likely that Toyota’s new SUV will be exported to South Africa once the new factory is up and running.
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