Daimler and the Renault-Nissan Alliance are pushing their cooperation further with the announcement of a manufacturing joint venture called COMPAS (Cooperation Manufacturing Plant Aguascalientes).
The joint venture will build a plant in Aguascalientes in central Mexico for the production of next-generation premium compact vehicles from Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti. The new business entity COMPAS is 50:50 owned by Daimler and Nissan, with both partners investing a total of $1 billion in the enterprise.
The new plant will be located near the existing Nissan Aguascalientes A2 facility and will have an initial annual production capacity of more than 230,000 vehicles. Depending on the market development and customer demand, the plant will be able to build up to 300,000 vehicles a year.
The first Infiniti vehicles will roll off the assembly line in 2017, while the first Mercedes-Benz vehicles will be produced from 2018. By 2020, Daimler and Nissan estimate that the plant will create about 3,600 direct jobs.
The COMPAS joint venture is led by an international management team from Daimler and Nissan, with Ryoji Kurosawa acting as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Uwe Jarosch as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Glaucio Leite as Chief Quality Officer (CQO).
“COMPAS is an outstanding example of the global reach of the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler cooperation. Together we are combining the manufacturing expertise of Nissan and Daimler in one production plant in Mexico for the production of next-generation premium compact cars,” said COMPAS CEO Kurosawa.
Daimler and Nissan will also build the next-generation premium compact cars at other production sites around the world, including Europe and China. The companies didn’t say which models will be built in Mexico, but according to previous reports the plant will produce the next-generation Mercedes-Benz GLA and all-new Infiniti models.
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