PT Honda Prospect Motor (HPM), a joint venture between Japan’s Honda Motor Co., and Indonesia’s Prospect Motor, has recently launched its second factory in the Indonesian province of West Java, in a bid to satisfy the growing local demand.

Addressing the inauguration ceremony, Honda Motor Co. President Takanobu Ito said that Indonesia, which tops ASEAN countries in terms of automobile consumption, is one of its biggest growing markets.

HPM President Director Tomoki Uchida said the inauguration of the plant showed its push to achieve the sales target of 300,000 cars by 2016.

Covering an area of 145,760 square metres, the new factory is expected to generate 3,900 new jobs on the assembly line, 12,000 for suppliers and 6,200 among dealers.

The plant will help raise the HPM’s annual output to 200,000 cars from the existing capacity of 80,000, and will also be the world’s first plant to produce Honda Mobilio cars.

According to HPM’s Marketing and After-sales Service Director Jonfis Fandy, the factory will initially produce 80,000 Mobilio cars this year before receiving a 256 million USD investment in order to build other new models and raise its total production capacity of 120,000 cars per year.

The HPM accounted for 7.5 percent of the total 1.2 million cars sold in 2013, added Fandy.-VNA