Top Automotive: Mazda-Ford stop factory in the U.S.

Mazda will shift Mazda6 production from Michigan factory, to Japan, in early 2013.


Mazda Motor Corp., one of Japan's largest automaker, will stop production of a joint venture plant with Ford Motor Co. in the United States.

Japanese news agency, NHK, said Mazda Mazda6 will shift production from AutoAlliance International Inc. plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, to the factory in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, in early 2013. Last year, this factory produces 54 thousand vehicles.

"The strengthening yen against the U.S. dollar which reached 13 percent in the past year to make Mazda's overseas sales revenue fell," the report said.

Shipping Mazda in the U.S. in May and down 21 percent from a year earlier. Kiyoshi Ozaki, head of the finance company based in Hiroshima, said the company will announce plans U.S. production in the middle of this year.

Ken Haruki, a spokesman for Mazda in Tokyo, and Jeremy Barnes, Mazda North American spokesman, declined to comment on this report. "The company has been discussing the future plans for our factory in the U.S.," said Haruki.

In a statement, Mazda said the report on AutoAlliance plant closures are not based on information disclosed by Mazda. "Mazda and Ford jointly study the possibilities for AutoAlliance, and we have not announced today,"the statement said, as quoted by Automotive News, Sunday, June 5, 2011

A Ford spokesman also declined to comment on the report.

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