Video: Auto Industry A Major Boost For Mississippi Manufacturers

[bitsontherun 4ZihoJ34]

NORTHEAST Miss. (WCBI)- New Albany’s Diversity Vuteq builds plastic parts for Toyota’s Blue Springs facility. The 130 employees make everything from seat belt holders to scuff plates. With the auto industry now taking a positive turn, it increases the need for their products.

“Here in Mississippi, we’ve been very fortunate that TMMS is assembling and building the Toyota Corolla, which is one of the top 10 sellers in North America, it’s a great car to supply for. Toyota’s production has been slightly higher than expected so of course that means we’re producing more parts,” said Chris Spence, President of Diversity-Vuteq.

The more parts they produce for Toyota, the brighter the future for their company and Northeast Mississippi.

“It takes a while for it to trickle down, 5 to 10 years later, we’re not going to recognize the place. There’s going to be hopefully sustained jobs, an increased tax based and just a general improvement in the prosperity of living, said Spence.

Doug Formby is Vice President of production at the Toyota plant in Blue Springs. He believes if the momentum continues, Mississippi’s facilities will continue to help drive the economy.

” You’re seeing consumer confidence continue to pick up, we’re seeing traffic at the dealerships continue to pick up. I feel like it will continue to grow over the next several years and probably by 2015 be up in the 16 million range and maybe even beyond,” said Formby.

The New Corolla is expected to come out of the Toyota plant this fall.

Companies in general are still slow to hire extra people until they feel very confident that the industry is going to continue to grow.

But if consumer confidence continues to boom, officials say it will eventually trickle down to the hiring process.

Categories: Local News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *