Toyota Plans Plant Expansion to Boost Pickup Production

Toyota Motor Corp. said Friday that it would boost production of Tacoma pickup trucks at its Baja California plant in a $37-million expansion that starts this year.

The plant, on the eastern outskirts of Tijuana, will be able to produce 50,000 mid-size trucks for the U.S. and Mexico when the expansion is completed in 2007. That represents a 67% increase from the current capacity of 30,000 vehicles.

Company officials said they had not determined how many new workers would be needed to handle the increased production. The plant opened in August 2004 and employs about 800, mostly residents of Tijuana and Tecate.

Workers at the plant also assemble 200,000 Tacoma truck beds each year.

Toyota has expanded the Baja plant -- its only Mexican factory -- several times since it opened. The new work will bring the company’s total investment there to $177 million.

Toyota, the world’s second-largest automaker, is rapidly expanding. The Japanese company has built a dozen manufacturing plants in North America since 1982 and has two more under construction: a plant for full-size pickups in San Antonio and a Canadian plant for small SUVs slated to open in 2008.

Toyota shares were down $1.41 at $102.56.