Toyota Picks Ontario Site for 7th Plant

Toyota Motor Corp.'s seventh plant in North America will produce 100,000 RAV4s annually beginning in 2008.

The new plant will be in Woodstock, Ontario, just 25 miles (40 km) from Toyota's existing Canadian assembly plant, Toyota Motor Mfg. Canada Inc., which employs 4,300 people in Cambridge. The Woodstock facility will employ some 1,300 workers.

Executives will not confirm if Woodstock will produce the next-generation of the small cross/utility vehicle, but Toyota typically redoes its models about every five years. The current-generation RAV4 debuted as an '01 model.

Last year, Toyota sold 70,314 RAV4s in the U.S., 6,991 in Canada and 7,085 in Mexico.

Dennis Cuneo, senior vice president-external affairs and public policy for Toyota North America, says initially engines and transmissions for the RAV4 likely will be imported from Japan, but “we're going to have to localize. It's a matter of timing, whether we do it in the beginning or whether we wait,” he says. “We haven't decided yet.”

As to reports Scions would be built in Woodstock, Cuneo says, “What we do with Scion is another decision.” Currently all Scions are produced in Japan.