Toyoda Gosei to expand airbag production in Brazil

By George Guimarães | 3/27/23 | Translated by Jorge Meditsch

In Brazil since 2013, Toyoda Gosei, a Toyota Group company known here as GDBR Industria e Comércio de Componentes Químicos e Borracha, will expand the production capacity of its plant in Itapetininga, SP.

According to the company, the decision announced in Japan this Monday, 3/27, results from the growth of airbag and other safety systems sales in South America.

The production expansion to be concluded by the end of 2024 will include the growth of the built-up area from 18 thousand to 22.8 thousand square meters, a new layout for the whole plant and new equipment and machines for airbag and steering wheel manufacture.

GDBR has 449 employees and demanded an initial investment of R$ 90 million. The company doesn’t disclose the current and future production capacity of the unit inaugurated in 2016, three years after the purchase of the 220 thousand square meter land tract.

“Since then, production and sales centered in items for interior and exterior and rubber door and window sealing have increased”, says the company, which expects sustainable growth in South America and will focus especially on safety systems.

Founded in Japan in 1949, the group has 64 companies and nearly 40 thousand employees in 16 countries. The Brazilian operation is the first in South America and supplies products for Toyota plants in Brazil and Argentina and also for Honda in Brazil.