PSA Peugeot Citroen unveiled plans on Friday to build a 557-million-euro ($630 million) Moroccan factory, as the French carmaker seeks to reduce both production costs and boost emerging-market sales.


Peugeot Citroen unveiled plans on Friday to build a 557-million-euro ($630 million) Moroccan factory, as the French carmaker seeks to reduce both production costs and its reliance on Europe following a brush with bankruptcy.

The site near the coastal city of Kenitra will begin assembling small and subcompact models for Africa and the Middle East in 2019, chief executive Carlos Tavares said after signing the investment deal at Morocco's royal palace in Rabat. An initial annual production capacity of 90,000 vehicles is expected to rise to 200,000 as sales pick up, he said.

The planned factory, first reported by Reuters last November, represents a belated step by Paris-based Peugeot to expand into lower-cost vehicles and emerging markets, reducing its exposure to Western Europe's relatively stagnant demand and high production costs.

It is also a sign of Morocco's growing industrial clout, which has seen it draw increasing investment in sectors ranging from cars to aerospace. Peugeot said it expects the plant to source 60 per cent of components locally, rising to 80 per cent as the supply chain develops. It will have a 4,500-strong workforce once at the 200,000-vehicle capacity.

"Africa and the Middle East are historic markets for PSA and the region is expected to become a profitable driver of our internationalisation," CEO Tavares said on Friday.

The former Renault second-in-command took over at Peugeot last year following a 3-billion-euro government-backed bailout in which it sold matching 14 per cent stakes to the French state and Chinese carmaker Dongfeng after racking up billions of euros in losses.

Under his "Back in the Race" recovery plan, Peugeot is pursuing a 5 per cent operating margin.

The core automotive division returned to a small profit in 2014, but with about 60 per cent of sales still recorded in the cut-throat European market, where the profitability of mass-market carmakers is under constant pressure.

COMPETE ON COSTS

Until now, Peugeot has lacked a low-cost production capability to rival Renault plants in Romania and Morocco that assemble budget models including the hot-selling Duster SUV.

The models built in Morocco are likely to replace the Peugeot 301 and Citroen C-Elysee sedans assembled in Vigo, Spain, for many of the same markets including Turkey and North Africa.

They will be built on a new low-cost vehicle architecture, CMP, developed by its joint venture with Dongfeng for future models produced in China for the domestic market and South-East Asia.

Weak sales of the current no-frills offerings reflect plant and labour costs that are too high to compete effectively against Renault rivals such as the Duster or comparable offerings from Hyundai and Toyota.

As output ramps up in Morocco and is expected to resume in Iran - where international sanctions have forced western carmakers to halt sales - Tavares is targeting 1 million annual vehicle sales by 2025 in the Middle East and Africa.

That represents a 12.5 per cent share of a market seen expanding by 44 per cent over the next decade, and where Peugeot's current market share stands at 3 per cent.

The Morocco plant represents only a modest shift by Peugeot towards lower-cost production but is nonetheless politically sensitive in France, where the carmaker is cutting jobs.

Concerns mounted following the November Reuters report, which detailed plans by the carmaker to outsource some engineering functions to a Moroccan R&D centre run by Altran , a process now underway.

Peugeot's CGT union said on Friday the carmaker had eliminated 14,800 jobs over the past two years, denouncing the plant investment as a sign of further pain to come.

"There's no way we are going to accept that PSA's internationalisation strategy be carried out at the expense of workers," the union said in a statement. – Reuters