Mercedes is looking for a location to build a new engine and car plant. According to reports in the polish press, the city of Jawor in southeast Poland is the big favourite for the Mercedes plant and the final decision should be announced until the mid of April 2016.
More and more carmakers are moving the production in Eastern and Central Europe. Slovakia and Poland are the most preffered destination for many carmakers.
At the end of 2015, Jaguar Land Rover has choosen Nitra in Slovakia to build a new 1.5 billion euro factory.
According to polish business paper Puls Bisnesu, Daimler is considering Poland instead of Russia for a new car plant.
It seems that the city of Jawor in sowthern Poland is the main favourite for the new Mercedes plant location. Jawor was also in discussion for the Jaguar Land Rover plant but lost in the end in favour of Nitra.
Mercedes has also other activities in the region. Mercedes CLA and CLA Shooting Brake are built at the new plant in Kecskemet, Hungary and on April 4 will extend the gearbox plant at Sebes, in Romania, for production of the new 9G-Tronic automatic gearbox.
According to polish press, Daimler intent to build a car plant and an engine plant. The reports did not mention which models Daimler would build in the plant saying only that the company plans to produce cars based on the MRA Platform (new rear wheel drive architecture used for the E-Class, C-Class, GLC).
Polish paper announced that the decision is imminent and will be taken in the mid of April, after Dieter Zetsche, Daimler CEO, has declared in an interview for mercedesblog.com at Geneva Motorshow that “there are currently no decisions regarding local production of Mercedes-Benz passenger cars in Germany, because the grown does not come from Germany”.
On the other hand, Mercedes needs aditional production capacity. The german luxury carmaker is enjoying one of the best period of its 130 years history and the objective to become No. 1 carmaker in the world was already achieved 4 years earlier than it was plan.
Mercedes sold 284,566 cars (+16%) in the first two months of 2016, with almost 7,000 cars more than the traditional rival BMW.
