Production in January was 200% higher than in the year-ago month, when the plant was assembling B-Max cars, according to Automotive Manufacturers and Importers Association (APIA).
The production volume in Craiova equals an average daily pace of more than 500 units, going from 500 at the beginning of the month to 600 at the end of it. Moreover, the plant had to work weekends in January and February to meet demand.
If Ford continues to assemble vehicles at the same rate until the end of the year, its production will reach at least 130,000 cars, which are worth EUR2 billion. Adding the engines made in Craiova, Ford could end the year as the second largest exporter in the country after Renault-owned Automobile Dacia.
Ford Romania assembled almost 3,000 Ecosport cars in October and November 2017, the first two months since the start of production, which most likely reached nearly 6,000 units in December. Therefore 20,000 Ecosport cars were assembled in the first four months of production, most of which in January.
Ford Ecosport was second only to Duster in terms of number of cars assembled in January, with almost 18,000 units of the new Duster model leaving the Dacia plant that month.
Production of the five models at Dacia and Ford may come close to 500,000 units in 2018, 350,000 of which assembled in Mioveni and 130,000 in Craiova.
This volume would put Romania ahead of Hungary and Malaysia and close to Poland but still behind Czech Republic and Slovakia, which are already way past one million cars assembled in one year because of their infrastructure, logistics and location in Central Europe.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)