BRATISLAVA, June 29 (Reuters) - The Slovak subsidiary of German car maker Volkswagen AG will halt part of its assembly lines for up to three weeks to prepare the launch of the new Audi sports utility vehicle (SUV), it said on Tuesday.
The VW plant - the backbone of Slovakia's flourishing car sector - is the country's top exporter and accounts for about 20 percent of exports. It aims to start producing SUVs for the Volkswagen luxury car unit Audi by the end of 2005.
"We have to temporarily shut down a substantial part of the paintshop for two or three weeks because we are preparing a new model... the (Audi) Pikes Peak is a bit different than we expected," VW Slovakia Chairman Jozef Uhrik told journalists. He said the shutdown, planned for the last week of July and beginning of August, should not affect the firm's full year goal to raise its turnover in financial terms by about 10 percent.
The VW unit, which makes the four-wheel-drive Touareg model as well as the Polo and SEAT brands, had turnover of 184 billion crowns ($5.6 billion) last year.
Uhrik said the shutdown, planned for the last week of July and the start of August, also should not endanger a plan to meet higher demand by increasing the output of Touaregs by several thousand units from its original 2004 target of 90,000.
The Slovak Volkswagen unit, which also aims to produce 40,000 Cayenne off-roader bodies for Porsche this year, expects to close down production in its Bratislava plant once again to refit lines during Christmas holidays. The company said recently it did not expect any production jump this year from 281,000 cars assembled in 2003 as it was running near its total capacity of 300,000 units per year. ($1=32.843 Slovak crowns)