September 22 (SeeNews) - French automaker Renault said on Wednesday that it will start to manufacture the Dacia Logan MCV model also in Tangiers, in Morocco, in the first quarter of 2017, in order to provide greater production capacity for the highly popular Dacia Duster at its Romanian plant in Mioveni.
"Given the success of the Dacia Duster, our plant in Mioveni must meet very high commercial demand for this model (second in its segment, especially in Europe). In order to open up production capacity for Duster, Renault Group will start to produce the Logan MCV at its plant in Tangier," Renault Groupe said in a press release late on Wednesday. "Thus, from the first quarter of 2017, Logan MCV will be produced at the Mioveni factory and at the plant in Tangier, Morocco."
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Currently, Logan MCV is being manufactured only at the Mioveni plant in Arges county, in southern Romania.
As the plant in Mioveni is operating at full production capacity, the move will not impact its staff or work organisation, it added.
Renault's clarifications came after the director of the company's plant in Morocco, Jean-Francois Gal, said on Wednesday that Renault will start producing the Dacia Logan MCV at the plant in Tangiers in the first quarter of 2017, suggesting that production of the model could be entirely relocated from Romania.
Gal also said that the Morocco plant will need 20 million euro ($22.2 million) investment in order to sustain the new production line, French business magazine L'Usine Nouvelle reported. The Tangiers plant currently manufactuers other Dacia models: Sandero, Dokker and Lodgy.
Both Dacia and Renault officials have repeatedly criticized the Romanian authorities for being slow to build a motorway between Sibiu and Pitesti, which would allow the Romanian car maker to export more rapidly to the Western markets.
Dacia's sales in the EU rose 10.5% on the year to 283,420 units for the first eight months of 2016, according to preliminary data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, ACEA.
Romanian car maker Automobile Dacia, a unit of France's Renault posted a net profit of 447.9 million lei ($113 million/99.5 million euro) in 2015, up 20.4% on the year, while turnover increased 1.8% to 19.16 billion lei.
Worldwide sales of Renault under its Dacia brand rose a modest 0.1% to 339,179 vehicles last year. The most popular models were the Duster SUV and the updated Logan and Sandero models.
In March, Renault group named Yves Caracatzanis as new director general of Dacia and Renault Romania.
Renault bought Romania's Automobile Dacia, an ailing state-owned company at the time, in 1999.
Dacia topped the SeeNews ranking of the biggest companies in Southeast Europe by total revenue for 2014, surpassing Romanian oil and gas firm OMV Petrom.
(1 euro = 4.4509 Romanian lei)
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