South Korean carmaker Kia Motors plans to expand manufacturing at its unit at Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh. The company will invest an additional $54mn to ramp up production, once demand for its model Sonet picks up, according to media reports. Kia’s Sonet model is set to be launched in August- September. The additional investment would increase the plant’s capacity by upto 150,000 units.
The Anantpur plant has a production capacity of 300,000 units at present. The company had initially planned to reach 100pc capacity utilisation by 2021. In 2019, the company produced around 1.45mn units from all its plants.
Kia, however, has shut its assembly line at Batna, Algeria amid supply chain disruption. The assembly line had an annual capacity of 50,000 vehicles. The decision came in the wake of Algerian government banning imports of car spare parts.