Kia Would Be Investing $100m For Its Plant In Georgia

By Author: Marty Vergel Baes
Total Articles: 423
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Most of the car makers in the US right now had been complaining about the decreases on their sales in the month of May. However, Kia Motors together with Hyundai experienced a different outcome. They are actually experiencing a series of sales increase for the past few months and this was brought about by the rising demand for their expensive and cheap new car models. In addition to this, Kia and Hyundai had been offering auto loans with better rates to most of its customers thereby boosting their sales. Due to this, almost every vehicle models included on their new car prices list became popular. This event eventually led the higher management of Kia Motors to focus its attention on expanding its production.

To address the growing demand for their vehicles in the US, Kia plans to invest $100 million for the upgrade of its assembling plant in West Point, Georgia. The investment will be used in expanding the plant’s production capacity to about 20% higher ...
... than the present. The completion of the plant expansion is estimated to be completed by 2012 and this will bring Kia’s production capacity to about 360,000 units compared to its present output of 300,000 units.

Although the plant in Georgia has been operating well and almost reached its full capacity for the past two months, Kia expects that this would eventually be inadequate to accommodate the demand for their vehicles in the next few months as evidenced by the 53% increase in sales this May.

The expansion would also allow Kia to add a third shift on its plant’s operation. As a preparation for this third shift, Kia has hired 1,000 new workers bringing its plant’s personnel to a total of 3,000 workers. The third shift is intended to assemble the mid-sized sedan Kia Optima by September. The plant would also be handling the production of other vehicles such as the Sorento and Hyundai’s Santa Fe. Focusing on producing these vehicle models is very important since the Sorento proved to be Kia’s best selling model for the months of January to May of this year. Intensifying the production of Hyundai’s Santa Fe model that shares a platform with the Optima is also an important strategy for Kia’s ally which is Hyundai.