General Motors and Tier I Suppliers Expanding Louisiana Assembly

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated, Houston, Texas). General Motors Corporation (NYSE:GM) (Detroit, Michigan) has begun a major expansion on its truck assembly plant located in Shreveport, Louisiana. The expansion project calls for the addition of a 1.7 million square foot building adjacent to the existing GM assembly plant. The new building will provide an assembly line area, as well as a paint shop. Upon completion of the project, production will move to that building, and GM plans to idle the old plant until a new product line is decided upon.

Gilbane Building Company (Providence, Rhode Island) has been selected as General Contractor for the project. Construction, which is running about six months behind the original schedule, is scheduled to begin in March 2003, with completion targeted for December 2003.

The existing Shreveport plant presently assembles the GMC Sonoma and Chevrolet S-10 small pickup truck lines. When the new plant begins production in late 2003 or early 2004, it will be assembling the 2004 model of the recently-announced mid-size Colorado truck.

A GM Shreveport Tier I supplier has recently begun construction on a new plant in a new industrial park in Longview, Texas, which is within a 90-minute drive of Shreveport, thus allowing for JIT (Just In Time) delivery. Dana Corporation (NYSE:DCN)(Toledo, OH ) will supply GM with suspension components. The Crown Group, Incorporated (Warren, Michigan) will share an area of the plant, where it will do powder-coating or electro-coating of the parts that Dana manufactures.

Construction of the Dana plant is in the final stages now and Dana is installing equipment and machinery at this time. According to a company spokesman, they expect to have 100 employees by the end of this year. Prototype production begins in April 2003 and full production is targeted for October 2003, at which time they expect to have 400 employees. Dana will then be Longview's largest single employer.