From the business page of The Australian: “The plant, which will employ 2000 people and is due to start production within three years, will be Toyota’s eighth in North America. Toyota’s expansion is in sharp contrast to cuts by the three Detroit-based car makers, General Motors, Ford Motor and the Chrysler unit of DaimlerChrysler.”
From National Public Radio (includes audio): “Winning a new Toyota plant was an exhausting prospect for Ed Neelly, the mayor of Tupelo, Miss. Neelly and other city officials have worked for six years, traveling the world, to seal the deal with the Japanese automaker.”
Also from NPR: “Arkansas has now been twice spurned by Toyota.”
The Pine Bluff (AR) Commercial: Air quality, not Arkansas’ incentive package, was the deciding issue in Toyota’s decision to put a new, $1.3 billion plant in Mississippi instead of at Marion in Crittenden County, Gov. Mike Beebe says.
The Associated Press: “Gov. Bob Riley said Tuesday he tried to help Mississippi land the Toyota Motor Corp. assembly plant because it will provide jobs in Alabama.”
The Detroit Free Press: “Toyota, expected to pass General Motors Corp. this year as the world’s largest automaker, has been rapidly expanding its North American manufacturing base.”
From Reuters, via the Jamaica Gleaner: “Japanese business daily Nikkei reported earlier that the plan, to cost around yen100 billion (US$830 million), would have capacity to build 150,000 units a year and would produce the Highland sport utility vehicle starting in 2009. A separate report from Kyodo news agency put the investment figure at yen200 billion and output capacity of 200,000 units a year.”
National Association of Manufacturers blog: “At a simultaneous press conference yesterday in Tupelo and here in Washington at the National Press Club, Toyota announced its plans to build a $1.3 billion, 2,000-employee assembly plant in Northern Mississippi, an enormous project that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour rightly called, “the jewel in the crown of economic development.”
