AGUASCALIENTES, Mexico—Five years after announcing their strategic collaboration, Daimler and the Renault-Nissan Alliance are expanding its scope with the start of a manufacturing joint venture in Aguascalientes in central Mexico.
The new business entity, COMPAS (Cooperation Manufacturing Plant Aguascalientes). is 50:50 owned by Daimler and Nissan, the companies announced today in a statement. The companies will invest $1 billion in COMPAS, which will oversee the construction and operation of a manufacturing plant to produce next-generation premium compact vehicles for the brands Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti.
Located near the Nissan Aguascalientes A2 plant, the plant will have an initial annual production capacity of more than 230,000 vehicles and create about 3,600 direct jobs by 2020. Depending on market development and customer demand, there will be the potential to add capacity. Production of Infiniti vehicles will begin in 2017, and the first Mercedes-Benz vehicles will roll off the line in 2018.
COMPAS is led by an international management team from Daimler and Nissan that includes CEO Ryoji Kurosawa, CFO Uwe Jarosch and Chief Quality Officer Glaucio Leite .
COMPAS's Board of Directors is made up of three executives each from Mercedes-Benz and Nissan.
Kurosawa said that Aguascalientes was selected as the location for this new plant because of the “state's well-established supplier base and Nissan's track record in highly efficient manufacturing in Mexico for more than three decades.”
The plant will be Mercedes-Benz Cars’ first production location for compact cars in the NAFTA region, said Jarosch.
Daimler and Nissan’s luxury vehicle division, Infiniti, announced in June that it will cooperate in the development of the next-generation premium compact vehicles for the brands Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti. The two partners will closely collaborate at every stage of the product creation process, but the Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti vehicles will clearly differ from each other in terms of product design, driving characteristics and specifications.
Daimler and Nissan will also produce next-generation premium compact cars at other locations, including Europe and China.
