Toyota Motor Corp. Wednesday broke ground on a $1.3 billion assembly plant near Tupelo, Miss., its eighth in North America.

The factory, due to open in 2010, will make about 150,000 Highlander crossover sport utility vehicles a year, Toyota said. The vehicle is currently only made in Japan.

Toyota said the plant -- on 1,700 acres in Blue Springs, Miss., 20 miles northwest of Tupelo -- will employ 2,000 people.

The state pledged $296 million in incentives to land the factory.

Toyota's U.S. sales grew nearly 13 percent to 2.54 million vehicles last year, outpacing its U.S. production capacity, the company said.

Toyota, which may surpass General Motors Corp. as the world's biggest automaker this year, opened a Tundra pickup-truck plant in Texas last fall. It plans to open a Camry auto plant in Indiana this year and an RAV4 compact crossover-SUV plant in Ontario in 2008.

The Toyota plant will be the second big auto factory in Mississippi. Nissan Motor Co. opened an assembly plant in Canton, outside Jackson, in 2003.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International


Publication date: 18 April 2007   

Source: UPI-1-20070418-18213100-bc-us-toyota.xml

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