Ford announced that it will pay $77.9 million to purchase a 72.4% stake in the state-owned Automobile Craiova plant in Romania, with the other 27.6% held by a variety of employee pension schemes. Ford plans to use the former Daewoo plant to increase its production capacity in Europe. The deal is set to be signed on September 12th at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
While the plant only produced 24,000 cars and 116,000 engines last year, Ford plans to increase its capacity to 300,000 cars and engines annually. Ford will also be increasing the workforce from about 3,900 employees to as many as 9,000. Ford officials said the upgrades are expected to be completed by 2012 with a cost of $1.37 billion.
According to The Detroit News, Ford Europe produced 1.86 million vehicles at seven assembly plants in 2006.
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09/07, 3:16 PM
posted by:
Deanster
Great. That’s really interesting. Good on you, Ford.
09/07, 6:36 PM
posted by:
Commodore
Ford Europe is the sht. Now if only we got some of the cars being produced at that Romanian Ford plant…….
09/08, 10:35 PM
posted by:
2008PowerStrokeF450Lariat
and everybody thought ford was broke
09/09, 6:10 AM
posted by:
silviumc
$77mil is pocket change. They practically got the factory for free. They will use it to manufacture a model that’s being designed now from scratch in Germany and UK.
09/09, 7:51 AM
posted by:
reguardo
That’s roughly the same amount the Romanian government paid to Daewoo last year for 49% of the company. The factory and the land are worth 1 billion $.
09/10, 10:59 AM
posted by:
Get Real
To me sound like imports are coming to the US market.
PS- how can a factory and land be worth $1 Billion ?????
What is the GDP of Romania equal to……..San Diego ?
09/10, 11:33 AM
posted by:
autonut
What a purchase! And who will work in that facility? All characters from Borat who can’t get jobs after Borat done filming?
09/21, 11:48 PM
posted by:
BLISS
I HOPE ITS PROFITABLE.