Japanese automobile manufacturer, Honda, is set to spend more than $300 million to upgrade its Alliston, Ontario, assembly operations where it builds the Honda Civic and CR-V.
The car maker said it will invest up to $308.7 million (C$408.3 million) while the Canadian and Ontario governments will each give Honda conditional grants worth $31.6 million a piece. It is not known what those conditions are.
Honda will design and build of a new state-of-the-art paint shop intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the paint process by 44 percent, the Ontario government said in a news release.
The automaker will also spend some of the money on research and development to support production of future vehicle models and assembly technologies, including lightweight materials and advanced material bonding techniques. Neither Honda nor the governments said if the new vehicle models would eventually be built in Alliston.
Premier Kathleen Wynne and Ontario Finance Minister Brad Duguid met with Honda executives, including Honda Canada CEO Jerry Chenkin, at the company’s headquarters in Tokyo as part of a business mission to Japan and South Korea in November 2016.
“Thank you to both the Ontario and Federal governments for creating an environment which will allow us to further modernise our manufacturing facilities and make innovative upgrades possible,” Chenkin said in a statement.
“As a result of these upgrades, Honda Canada Manufacturing will continue to provide thousands of well-paying, high quality jobs in Alliston and throughout Canada.”
The upgrades will secure 4,000 direct jobs in Alliston, the automaker said, Automotive news reports.
