Automotive: Spanish Gestamp to Build Plant in Morocco

The Madrid-based company Gestamp, which specializes in the design, development and manufacture of highly engineered metal components for the automotive industry, has unveiled plans to build a plant in the Moroccan town of Kenitra, located around 40 km away from Rabat, next to the plant that PSA is building in the town.

The facility is expected to start operations in 2019 with 120 employees. In a first stage, the plant will be dedicated to the assembly of Body-in-White parts and small stamping.

With this new unit, Gestamp will accompany two of its main global clients, PSA and the Renault-Nissan Group. The Spanish company is present in 21 markets globally.
Gestamp CEO Francisco J. Riberas said: “Morocco in particular and Africa as a whole are emerging markets with great growth potential in vehicle manufacturing”. He also described the North African Kingdom as “a promising country in the automotive industry”.

Gestamp is a world leader in making innovative design products for safer and lighter vehicles. Its know-how helps reduce energy consumption and environmental impact.

Morocco’s automotive industry is growing at a rapid pace due to incen-tives and competitive factors attracting more and more investors and car parts makers.

These factors include Morocco’s proximity to the European market, mod-ern infrastructures, free trade zones, qualified manpower, open economy and stability.

Experts say that the development of the automotive industry in the coun-try will help the Government create 90,000 jobs by 2020 in addition to the 100,000 that already exist.

The government also aspires to increase the proportion of locally pro-duced components in exported cars from 40 pc to 65 pc by the end of the decade.

French automaker Renault operates two vehicle assembly plants in Mo-rocco, in Casablanca and in Tangier, where earlier this year it produced its millionth vehicle since opening the factory in 2012. PSA Group will begin building cars near the Moroccan coastal city of Kenitra in 2019.

Morocco has succeeded in marketing itself as an attractive & highly com-petitive export base for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, offering in-vestors major incentives.

Morocco signed FTAs with the EU, the United States, and several Arab countries.