Innocent Chukwuma, chairman, Innoson Group,
disclosed this on Friday during a facility tour of the plant in Anambra state.
He said the establishment of the plant in
Imo is part of efforts to actualise the company’s mission to become a giant in
vehicle production in Africa.
“The Innoson factory expansion will be
situated at Naze Owerri in Imo. We have already acquired about 150,000sqm land
for this project and construction works are ongoing,” he said.
Also speaking, Cornel Osigwe, head of
corporate communications, Innoson Group, expressed excitement over the
endorsement of Innoson vehicles by Chukwuma Soludo, governor of Anambra.
Osigwe said the endorsement showed the
durability and capacity of the made-in-Nigeria vehicle.
“Governor Soludo is the first governor to
use Innoson vehicles as official vehicle and we are hopeful that such
endorsement will increase patronage from other state governments, corporate
organisations, and other well-meaning Nigerians,” he said.
“Presently, IVM is producing vehicles for
about five countries in Africa — including Sierra Leone, Mali, Congo, and Côte
d’Ivoire.”
According to him, the company is currently
migrating from manual production to becoming a fully automated production
plant.
He added that the manual production plant has
the capacity to produce about 10,000 vehicles annually, but at the completion
of the migration, production capacity will increase to about 60,000 annually.
The facility tour was attended by the
Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) correspondents’ chapel in Anambra.