EoW September 2010

Construction at Blue Spring was 90% complete in December 2008 when Toyota halted the project in response to plunging sales of its vehicles in the North American market. Most of the remaining work reportedly involves equipment installation. “Now it’s time to fulfill Toyota’s promise in Mississippi,” Yoshimi Inaba, the president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor North America, said in a statement. “Toyota remains committed to making vehicles where we sell them and to maintaining a substantial manufacturing presence in North America.” Production plans for Blue Spring have been adjusted yet again. The plant was initially intended to produce sport utility vehicles. Then, in mid-2008, as surging gas prices were generating demand for fuel-efficient vehicles, Toyota said it would build Prius hybrid cars there. (This was not to be; and Toyota on 17 th June did not address whether it would eventually build the Prius, now imported from Japan, in North America.) The latest candidate is the Corolla, the popular compact now in its tenth generation. Toyota might do well to let this one make it to the finish line in Mississippi. According to the auto buying guide Edmunds.com, the Corolla is “the quintessential economy car” and the best-selling nameplate in automotive history. Toyota said the opening of the Blue Spring plant would mean that nearly all Corollas sold in North America will be built in the US and Canada.

Paris-based Areva – to build a centrifuge enrichment plant in southern Idaho. A domestic competitor is General Electric (Fairfield, Connecticut), now working on a laser-based enrichment system at its Wilmington, North Carolina, plant. World Nuclear News reported (10 th June) that the Noble Group recently acquired a 5.13% stake in USEC for $30.2 million. The Hong Kong-based global supply chain manager is new to the nuclear field.

Automotive

Onetime partners Toyota and General Motors both give strong indications of a rapidly improving US auto market

Taking a vigorously proactive approach to repairing its fortunes in North America, Toyota Motor Corp on 17 th June announced that it would resume construction of a plant in Mississippi, put on hold 18 months before. The Japanese auto maker said its $1.3 billion plant in Blue Spring, 90 miles southeast of Memphis, is scheduled to start up in the fall of 2011. Delivering the good news all at once, Toyota said the plant would create 2,000 jobs, precisely the number in its original estimate.

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EuroWire – September 2010