Ford Increases Capacity at Kocaeli Plant

Ford’s Otomotiv Sanayi AS (Ford Otosan), a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and Turkey’s Koc Holding AS, aims to increase annual production capacity of its Kocaeli Plant by 25% to 400 thousand units. The company previously announced that it will invest over US$1 billion (about €700million) for the capacity increase and model renovations over the next three years. Ford Otosan is the lead plant and main manufacturing centre of the Transit and Transit Connect light commercial vehicles. The plant in Kocaeli has an over 6 thousand strong workforce and a current production capacity of 320 thousand units. In 2011 the company plans to raise its production by 20% to 290 thousand vehicles from the 242 thousand last year.