Hino Motors, Ltd, a Japanese manufacturer of trucks and buses and light-commercial vehicles, announced plans to establish a new 400,000 sq m development and production base in in Bang Bo, Samutprakarn Province, with an investment of JPY 11.5 billion (USD 104 million). The facility will be engaged in product planning, development, and production of light- and medium-duty trucks and buses. Initially vehicles will be produced for the domestic Thai market, and Hino expects to begin supplying to other emerging markets in ASEAN by around 2024.
Construction is scheduled to begin in July 2019, while operations are expected to start in 2021. It will employ around 1,300 staff when operations begin.
Hino’s production functions that are currently distributed across 3 existing plants in Thailand will be consolidated at the new center to improve production efficiency. Currently it has 3 factories, one in Samron and one in Bangplee, both of which are producing components for Toyota vehicles and one in Bangpakong producing Hino vehicles.
Know-how from Hino’s Koga Plant in Japan will be actively incorporated into the new plant to create a system that will enable Hino to deliver competitive products to our customers in a timely fashion.
(Sources: Hino Motors, Ltd.; Thailand Business News)