Hyundai plans 2nd plant

Hyundai Motor Co, South Korea’s biggest carmaker, said on Wednesday it would build a second automobile plant in India to meet the growing demand and aimed to use the country as a regional export centre.

Hyundai was targeting a 16 per cent increase in its Indian sales this year to 250,000 units — all of the cars to be produced locally — and hoped to nearly double sales to 400,000 by 2010, the company said in a statement. Hyundai, which controls half of the South Korean market, aims to become a global top five auto maker by 2010.

The new plant would have a production capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year, bringing Hyundai Motor’s total production capacity in India to 400,000 units by 2007.