Mitsubishi set to inaugurate new plant in Sta. Rosa, Laguna

PRESIDENT AQUINO

“NEW STAGE 2016” is Mitsubishi’s blueprint for its future. Included in this mid-term business plan is for the Japanese automotive giant’s resolve to strengthen its the production and sales base in the Asean region.

The target is to increase sales across the region’s five major markets—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines—from 270,000 vehicles in the 2013 financial year to 390,000 by 2016.

But to strengthen operations in the region, Mitsubishi needed to build a flexible production and sales framework.
Here in the Philippines, Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp. (MMPC) surmised that its 18-hectare plant in Cainta, Rizal, would no longer be sufficient to meet its parent company’s objectives.

A big opportunity came for MMPC when one major automotive company decided to restructure its regional manufacturing operations, and in the process, shut down its sprawling 21.4-hectare manufacturing plant in Sta. Rosa, Laguna.

On Jan. 29, this same plant will again start producing thousands of new vehicles. But this time, it would bear the Mitsubishi brand.

The manufacturing plant, which MMPC acquired from Ford last March 2014, will be formally inaugurated by President Benigno Aquino III as well as MMPC’s top executives.

The new plant will have a production capacity of 50,000 units per year, which can be doubled to 100,000 units. According to MMPC vice president for marketing services Froilan Dytianquin, hitting the 50,000 production capacity will depend on the new models that will be assembled.

Currently, the Cainta plant only has an annual capacity of 30,000 units, assembling L300 vans, Adventure Asian utility vehicles and Lancer EX sedans.

Hikosaburo Shibata, MMPC president and CEO, delightedly announced that the acquisition of the Sta. Rosa factory will further strengthen the company’s assembly operations, utilizing heavy stamping machines, advanced equipment and engineering facilities that will support Mitsubishi’s New Stage 2016 objectives.

The company is also anticipating the government’s automotive policy, which aims to strengthen local car-manufacturing operations to make them competitive against other Asian and Asean countries.

MMPC believes that strengthening its car manufacturing operations through this new automotive policy will eventually lead to huge job employment opportunities not only for car assemblers, but also industry-related companies and businesses such as first-, second- and third-tier suppliers.

The Philippine automotive industry roadmap is still being fine-tuned by the Department of Trade and Industry to make sure that the local manufacturing industry remains viable and competitive, especially in the Asean integration that will start by year-end. This year, the Asean Economic Community sets in motion a single market spanning the 10-nation bloc that includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Raising manufacturing capacity will depend entirely on the requirements that will be stated under the roadmap.