AUTOMOTIVE

Car plant for São Paulo

Japan’s Toyota Motor Corporation plans to build a $1bn car plant in Brazil’s São Paulo state. It will be Toyota’s second car plant in Brazil and is expected to produce more than 200,000 small economy cars a year as well as engines. The plant is scheduled for completion in 2010.

CHEMICALS

Canada-US Gulf oil pipeline

TransCanada Corporation is planning a $7bn expansion to the Keystone crude oil pipeline system to provide additional capacity of 500,000 barrels a day from western Canada to the US Gulf Coast by 2012. When completed, the expansion will increase the commercial design of the Keystone Pipeline system from 590,000 to about 1.1 million barrels a day. Construction of the facilities is expected to start in 2010.

RUBBER

Goodyear plant in Chile

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plans to invest $400m in Chile during the next four years to double production capacity at its Maipú plant. The investment will go towards installing an automated production line with the latest technology at the plant to produce high performance tyres for the domestic and international markets. The plant will be the second biggest plant in terms of production capacity in the region.

Toyo in Georgia move

Japan’s Toyo Tire & Rubber Company is to invest $264.3m to increase tyre production at its unit in the US state of Georgia to meet demand in North America. Following the expansion, tyre production at Toyo Tire North America will increase by 2.4 million units by 2010 and by 3.2 million units by 2011.

FOOD & TOBACCO

Carrefour Colombia push

The Colombian unit of French retailer Carrefour will spend $300m to open at least 15 new stores in Colombia, which will bring the number of Carrefour stores in Colombia to 61. The company plans to open stores in all the country’s cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, with subsequent plans to open in smaller cities and towns.

INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY, EQUIPMENT & TOOLS

Minneapolis development

Japanese firm Daikin Industries is to invest $498m to establish a US development centre for commercial air conditioners in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The centre is to open by the end of this year with about 70 employees, including engineers to be transferred from Japan, China and Europe. The products developed at the centre will be released in North America as early as 2009 with other markets to follow.

_{This investment news and data has been generated by fDi Markets, a crossborder investment tracking service that is part of the Financial Times Ltd's fDi Intelligence division www.fdiintelligence.com}

Americas FDI, 2008 (number of jobs)

_{Source: fDi Intelligence}