France - Groupe PSA has revealed that it will start making the new Opel/Vauxhall B-SUV at its Poissy plant, which is located about an hour north west of the French capital Paris. As a result, the facility will become the first to assemble a vehicle based on the company’s common modular platform (CMP).
“Poissy employees are proud to lead the way this year with the first implementation of this state of the art manufacturing process for our Group,” commented Frédéric Przybylski, manager of the Poissy plant. “Having an additional vehicle is the clear recognition of our performance improvement and I would like to thank all the teams that created the conditions to make it happen. It’s also a big responsibility and we are committed to achieve the highest levels of efficiency and quality for the satisfaction of our customers.”
The B-SUV will be built alongside the Peugeot 208, DS 3 and DS 3 Crossback. This has been made possible after a string of investments that PSA said it would make in its Poissy plant since 2016, including the construction of a new assembly line, which is now being used to make electric and non-electric DS 3 Crossbacks. It is the same line that will be used to make the Opel/Vauxhall B-SUV.
175,000 units were made at the Poissy plant in 2018, making it one of the smaller of PSA’s five vehicle assembly plants in France. In 2018 these facilities made a combined total of 1.2m units, marking a 6.4% increase on 2017.
The company has been investing in several other factories in different areas of the world. It recently announced it had started making its 3-cylinder 1.2-litre petrol engine at its plant in Tychy, Poland and has also opened a new powertrain plant in Hosur, India.
