TOKYO: Japanese car maker Mazda Motor Corp. will shut down its commercial vehicle plant next year due to a prolonged slump in truck sales, a business daily said on Monday.
Mazda, the nation's fifth-largest car maker and 33.3 per cent owned by US auto giant Ford, will close the plant in Fuchu, Hiroshima, western Japan, and focus on passenger car production, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.
Due to the plant closure, the company will ask Press Kogyo Co. Ltd., Japan's largest maker of press parts for automobiles, to make small trucks under Mazda's brand name, the daily said.
Mazda will also move van production to the second Ujina plant in Hiroshima and transfer all the 1,000 workers at the Fuchu plant to the second Ujina plant, which is scheduled to be reopened next year, it said.
Created in 1960, the Fuchu plant is Mazda's oldest domestic plant. It produced 72,038 vehicles in 2001, down 10.5 per cent from a year earlier.
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