PSA Peugeot Citröen Boosts Capacity for “Entirely New” Small Car in 2010

9 December 2005

PSA Peugeot Citroën has selected its Trnava, Slovakia, plant as the site for a future manufacturing unit with a potential production capacity of 150,000 vehicles per year, dedicated to an “entirely new vehicle” to be marketed alongside existing models.

The new car, despite its completely different design concept, will be built on the same small car platform as the plant’s other vehicles, and will be added to the PSA Peugeot Citroën product line-up in 2010.

The plant project will require an additional investment of roughly €350 million (US$413 million) in the Trnava plant, the foundation of which was laid in June 2003.

Trnava is due to come online in 2006 to make platform 1 vehicles (the foundation for the Citroën C3 and C3 Pluriel), with an annual capacity of 300,000 units on three shifts and a workforce of around 3,500 people. The just-announced expansion is additive to that capacity.

PSA Peugeot Citröen began consolidating its platform architectures from seven down to three (plus one for cooperation projects) several years ago. The entire Peugeot 307 range, for example, is based on platform 2, and the Citroën C5 on platform 3.

By 2006, these platforms will represent 90% of total Group production. Vehicles built on the same platform share at least 60% of production costs.

Ultimately, each assembly plant in Europe will be organized around a single platform—as Trvana, above.