Volvo Cars Setting up Its Maiden US Plant in South Carolina

‘Build where you sell’ seems to be the new mantra at Volvo Cars. And with this in view, the premium carmaker has now set up its first US manufacturing plant in Charleston, South Carolina.

Interestingly, Volvo Car’s first manufacturing facility in the US promises to complement its two manufacturing plants and an engine plant in Europe, three car plants and an engine plant in China, and assembly plants in India and Malaysia.

Top company officials said that the new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Charleston would start production of the new Volvo S60 premium mid-size sports sedan, based on the company’s Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) platform and the tentative time frame has been set to be in the fall of 2018. From 2021 onwards, the same plant will also start making the next generation of the Volvo XC90 large premium SUV. These officials said that the cars made at the new plant in the US would be sold both in the US’ domestic market and at the same time, would be exported to various international markets.

Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars, said that the Charleston plant would establish the US as the company’s third home market. The sedan segment and the SPA platform’s proven ability to boost profitability offer significant growth opportunities for Volvo Cars in the US and globally, he said.

Quite significantly, Volvo Cars will be coughing up nearly $1.1 billion in its new US manufacturing operations and will create close to 4,000 new jobs at the Charleston site over the next few years. Of these, nearly 1,500 employees will be employed by the end of this year itself.

Anders Gustafsson, president, and CEO of Volvo Car USA, on his parts, said that the opening of its first US plant certainly is a very big deal. This has to be seen in the light of the fact that its US business is developing well and its cars have won prestigious awards. The new South Carolina facility will be a big asset to both Volvo Cars and the community as a whole, he said.

The new manufacturing facility at Charleston would house an office building for up to 300 staff from R&D, purchasing, quality, and sales. The plant will have the capacity to produce 150,000 cars every year at full capacity. The plant is coming up on a sprawling 1,600-acre land and the building space would cover 2.3 million square feet. Interestingly, the actual construction on the facility broke ground in 2015. The company has plans to manufacture plug-in hybrid cars at all of its car plants globally. Last year, Volvo Cars happened to be the first global car maker to announce its strategy that from 2019 all new models will be electrified.