Hyundai makes India its biggest foreign manufacturing site

South Korean car giant Hyundai Motor Co opened a second plant in India on Saturday, making the country its biggest foreign manufacturing site.
The new plant in this town, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the southern city of Chennai, will double Hyundai's manufacturing capacity in the South Asian nation to 600,000 units a year, company officials said.
Hyundai expects to produce 530,000 cars this year, up from 300,000 last year, about half of which will be exported.
"Our new plant will be the platform of future growth," Hyundai Motor chairman and chief executive Mong-Koo Chung said at the opening of the plant.
India overtook the United States as Hyundai's biggest production base outside South Korea with the second plant, company officials said.
"Hyundai Motor India will be our global manufacturing hub for all of our small car models," the Hyundai chief executive said.
Chung said the company also plans to open a research and development facility in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.
Hyundai is the second-largest carmaker in India, behind only Japan's Suzuki Motor, and is the country's largest car exporter.
The South Korean firm expects to export Indian-made cars to 90 countries in 2008, up from 73 in 2007.
The company has set aside one billion dollars for investment in the new facility, about 750 million dollars of which has been spent, it said.
Construction of the plant, which will employ 7,500 people, began in November 2005.
Hyundai drove into India in October 1998 with the commissioning of its first plant at the same site. The initial plant's capacity was 130,000 cars a year.