Skip navigation
Newswire

RPT-GM's Opel to roll out 300,000 new Astra cars 2004

(Adds dropped word "facility" in final paragraph.)

ANTWERP, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Opel, the German unit of the world's biggest carmaker General Motors , plans to roll out some 300,000 units of its new Astra model next year, company executives said on Thursday.

Jonathan J. Lauckner, one of the executives overseeing the new Astra line, told reporters at a presentation of the new brand in the Opel plant in the port city of Antwerp, that figure would later rise to 500,000 following the start-up phase of production and after other versions of the model are launched.

Production at Antwerp, which will handle the bulk -- or some 240,000 units -- will kick off in January, with plants in Britain and Germany to follow shortly after.

Lauckner said the replacement of the existing Astra family of cars, which was launched in 1997, amounted to an investment of "more than one billion euros".

Eddy Geysen, the managing director at the Antwerp facility, said the plant will have a production capacity of 260,000 cars.