NAGOYA, April 20 (Kyodo) — Toyota Motor Corp. said Friday it is hiring an additional 600 workers for a car assembly plant in St. Petersburg in response to brisk demand for the Camry sedan in Russia.
Toyota has so far limited annual production at the plant to 20,000 vehicles. By hiring 600 new workers, boosting the plant's workforce to 1,750, the Japanese automaker plans to expand annual production to the facility's output capacity of 50,000 vehicles.
Toyota also plans to spend 7 billion yen to install machines for press and resin molding processes at the plant, to increase the proportion of locally made parts, it said.
Toyota began operating the plant in 2007, and had intended to boost its annual production to 50,000 vehicles by mid-2009 at the latest. But the expansion was delayed by a number of factors, including the global economic slowdown triggered by the near collapse of global financial markets in 2008.