TOKYO - Toyota Motor will invest 50 billion yen (467 million dollars) to build a new plant in Canada, its seventh auto factory in North America, to boost production in the region, a report said Monday.
Japan's top carmaker will construct the plant near its existing factory in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, and it is slated to be operational in 2008, the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
The new Ontario plant will manufacture small passenger cars and have a production capacity of 100,000 to 150,000 units a year.
With the new plant, Toyota's total output capacity in North America is expected to rise to 2.5 million units a year by 2008, up 67 percent from 1.5 million units in 2004, it said.
Toyota was also considering building another plant in the region by 2010, either in the United States or in Mexico, the report said.
Some 60 percent of Toyota's cars sold in North America were produced locally as of the end of 2004. Toyota president Fujio Cho has said the company is aiming to boost that figure to 75 percent.
A spokesman for Toyota could not be reached for comment.
05/29/2005 23:59 GMT