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Strategies & Market Trends : Graham and Doddsville -- Value Investing In The New Era -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (1453)	3/13/1999 12:03:00 AM
From: porcupine --''''>	Respond to of 1722

GM to spend $40 mln to expand Mich. pickup truck plant DETROIT, March 11 (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. said on Thursday that it will spend $40 million to expand its Flint, Mich., pickup truck plant to meet growing demand for heavy-duty full-size trucks. The expansion will increase capacity by 25 percent at the plant, an hour northwest of Detroit, spokesman Dan Flores said. It also will mean the addition of 250 jobs to the 2,740-person work force. "The heavy end of the pickup segment, the one-ton pickup, that market is skyrocketing," he said. "For us to meet customer demand in the future, we need to expand the plant." The world's largest automaker also said on Thursday that it will idle its mid-size minivan plant in Baltimore next week and ultimately lay off 200 people because of slowing sales of those vehicles. The Michigan plant makes heavy-duty versions of GM's full-size pickups, the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. The larger vehicles are used by both personal and commercial drivers. New versions of the full-size pickups went on sale last year, but the current heavy-duty full-size pickups are built on the previous platform, he said. GM has not said when it will switch to the new platform, other than it will be after the 2000 model year. The plant built just under 90,000 heavy-duty full-size pickups, Flores said. GM will build more of the new version and the expansion is based on that number, which Flores would not reveal. Demolition work at the Flint plant has already begun and interior renovation is scheduled to start in the second or third quarter, he said. GM said in 1997 it would spend $500 million to consolidate production of its core commercial trucks at the plant, moving assembly of the even bigger medium-duty trucks made in Janesville, Wis., there, as well as to prepare for the next-generation heavy-duty full-size pickup. The automaker is idling the Baltimore minivan plant, however, because of slowing sales, Flores said. The plant, which employs more than 2,600 people, made almost 138,000 Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari minivans last year. The plant will resume production at a slower rate on March 22, he said. Last year, sales of the Astro and Safari fell almost 14 percent each. ((--Detroit Newsroom, 313-870-0200))