NEW YORK -- Toyota Motor and Mazda Motor will invest an additional $830 million in an auto assembly plant under construction in the U.S. state of Alabama, the companies said Thursday.
The Mazda Toyota Manufacturing site, a joint venture between the Japanese carmakers, will manufacture SUVs. The facility will now be equipped with state-of-the-art production equipment and employee-training facilities to increase productivity. The total investment will be about $2.31 billion.
The annual production capacity will remain unchanged at 300,000 units and production will begin next year. Toyota had already announced that instead of producing the originally planned Corolla subcompact, it will make a new SUV at the site. Production will be evenly divided with Mazda SUVs.
Production staff will be recruited later this year, with a total of up to 4,000 expected to be working at the plant by 2022.
The two companies announced plans to build a new plant in 2018. Initially, they planned to invest $1.6 billion, but the investment was reduced by about $200 million at the start of construction.
