Kia Motors expected to pick site for first India plant next month: report

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Seoul/New Delhi: South Korea’s Kia Motors Corp is expected to pick a site next month for its first factory in India, stepping up plans to start making cars in one of the world’s fast-growing auto markets, two people familiar with the matter said.

The move would enable Kia to leverage the existing supplier base of its affiliate Hyundai Motor Co, India’s second-biggest automaker by sales. The proposed factory would start production in 2019 and eventually have capacity to make 300,000 Kia vehicles a year, one of the people told Reuters — a major bet for a firm that sold 3.05 million vehicles last year.

The Korean pair, jointly the world’s No.5 carmaker, are chasing new business after missing annual targets in 2015 for the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis. Their combined sales fell 2%t in first-half 2016, hit by weakness in markets like China, Russia and Brazil.

India is likely to become the world’s third-largest car market by 2020, according to IHS, up from fifth place now, with annual sales nearly doubling to about 5 million vehicles from 2.7 million in 2015.

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