This decision underscores our commitment to the NAFTA region. We have been building BMW cars at our US plant in Spartanburg for the past 20 years. With a planned annual capacity of 150,000 units for the new plant in Mexico, the BMW Group will be even better positioned to take advantage of the growth potential in the entire region. The Americas are among the most important growth markets for the BMW Group. We are continuing our strategy of “production follows the market.”

—Harald Krueger, member of the BMW AG Board of Management, responsible for Production

The large number of international free trade agreements—within the NAFTA area, with the European Union and the MERCOSUR member states, for example—was a decisive factor in the choice of location, BMW said. The BMW Group has maintained good relations with Mexican suppliers for many years and purchased products worth $1.6 billion locally last year.

The BMW Group has operated a local sales company in Mexico since 1994 and sold a total of 13,992 vehicles in the country in 2013. This represents an increase of almost 18.3% over the previous year. Motorcycle sales for the same period reached 2,064 units (+16.6%).

The BMW Group already announced a further investment of $1 billion at its existing plant in Spartanburg, USA in March of this year. This will increase that plant’s annual production capacity to up to 450,000 vehicles by the end of 2016 and make Spartanburg the largest plant in the BMW Group’s international production network.

A further $200 million will be invested to expand the joint venture carbon fiber plant in Moses Lake, Washington. This will triple local production capacity over the long term, making the Moses Lake plant the world’s largest carbon fiber manufacturing facility.

The BMW Group will thus invest a total of $2.2 billion US dollars in the NAFTA region in the period up to 2019.

In parallel, the BMW Group is currently building a plant in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil. The start of production for the Brazilian plant is scheduled for later this year. With plants in the US, Mexico and Brazil, the BMW Group will have extensive production capacity at key locations in North and South America.