Hino Marks Opening of Marion Auto Parts Plant

State and local economic development officials and workers with Hino Motors Ltd. On Tuesday marked the grand opening of the company’s new auto parts plant in Marion.
Hino, which is 51 percent owned by Toyota, has built a 400,000-SF, $160 million plant that will initially employ 200. The plant, located on a 160-acre plot in the Marion Railport Industrial Park near the southwest corner of Red Cross and Kuhn roads, will make differential, rear axle and suspension-related parts for Toyota vehicles. Hino holds top position in the Japanese market for medium-duty and heavy-duty diesel trucks.
Hino Chairman Tadaaki Jagawa, a former Toyota executive vice president, attended the Tuesday celebration, along with Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.
Hino chose Marion for its part plants in May 2004 after looking at 20 sites across the country.
“We’re very happy and satisfied with the land,” Bunju Hagiwara, a senior managing director and a member of Hino’s board of directors, told Arkansas Business in 2004. “Marion was the most attractive. It offers easy access to the freeways and a container railyard, both of which are very favorable for distribution, and a high-quality labor force.”
The Hino plant is one of several auto-related manufacturing facilities that have recently moved to the region. Late last year, Denso Corp. of Kariya, Japan, marked the official grand opening of the auto parts manufacturer’s Osceola plant, which will employ about 500 when production reaches full capacity by 2008. Systex Products Corp. of Battle Creek, Mich., built a manufacturing plant in Osceola to produce plastic injection-molding parts for automobile HVAC systems produced by Denso. And Eakas Arkansas, south of Wynne, last year finished a 91,000-SF plant that makes decorative, functional, interior and exterior trim and other modular assemblies for the automotive industry.
Arkansas officials still hold out hope that Hino will bring a full-fledged truck manufacturing plant to the region. Earlier this year, Huckabee visited Japan to continue to nurture relationships with the company and Toyota. Despite various reports about Hino’s plans, nothing official has been announced.