Area Development
The BMW Group will invest $750 million to expand its Spartanburg, South Carolina, manufacturing facility to increase production capacity. The company will add 1.5 million square feet, which includes a 1.2 million-square-foot assembly facility to produce the X3 Sports Activity Vehicle and a 300,000-square-foot addition to the paint shop. The expansion will create more than 500 new jobs at full operations. In addition to the X3, the facility will produce the X5 Sports Activity Vehicle, the X6 Sports Activity Coupe, and their respective variants for the global marketplace. BMW plans to increase production from 160,000 units to 240,000 units by 2012.