GSA Daily Staff Report
Published Sept. 1, 2010

BMW Manufacturing Co. announced today that it has begun production of the X3 Sports Activity Vehicle at its Spartanburg County assembly plant, following a Tuesday announcement that it plans to add another 500 contingency workers in the coming months.

This is an addition to the 500 jobs BMW has been filling since July. With Tuesday's announcement, the total number of jobs at the BMW plant in South Carolina will increase to more than 7,000.

The new employees will be hired by MAU Inc., BMW’s contract staffing partner. MAU confirmed that these jobs include health, dental, 401(k) and vacation benefits.

In early 2008, BMW Group said it would invest $750 million in the South Carolina plant, its largest investment in South Carolina to date. This commitment paved the way for construction of a new assembly line built exclusively to produce the BMW X3 along with a significant expansion to the existing paint shop. The 1.5 million-square-foot addition increases the plant's total footprint to more than 4 million square feet.

“The launch of the new X3 will mark a historic moment for this plant. I am confident that the BMW X3 is once again going to make our plant a leader in the Sports Activity segment,” Josef Kerscher, president of BMW's Upstate operation, said in a statement issued by the company.

BMW said more hiring is needed to respond to the strong demand for current products made at the South Carolina plant, as well as to ramp-up production of the plant's newest model, the X3. BMW plans to launch the X3 later this year and BMW's initial global sales forecast is very encouraging, the company said.

“As production of the new X3 gets under way and sales of the BMW X5 and X6 continue to do very well around the world, we see the need to expand our production team again to ensure we are well prepared to meet our forecasted demand,” Kerscher said.

BMW Manufacturing began production in 1994 as the first European manufacturer to build and successfully operate a plant in the U.S. The factory will mark its 16th production anniversary in South Carolina this September and has produced approximately 1.6 million vehicles since 1994. BMW has exported more than one million vehicles from its Upstate South Carolina plant during this time span making, BMW the largest U.S. automobile exporter to the non-NAFTA countries.

MAU, BMW’s contract staffing partner, will be responsible for hiring these contingent associates. MAU will be hiring over the next several months. Qualified applicants should attend job fairs at the Greenville OneStop between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Sept. 9, Sept. 15 or Sept. 22. MAU will hold job fairs in Spartanburg after the renovations at Spartanburg Community College’s Tyger River campus are complete.

Applicants can also apply online.

Within the last 7 years, the company said in its statement that the first-generation BMW X3 has been an extraordinary success story for the BMW Group.

The BMW X3 began production in 2004. After production of over 600,000 units, the last vehicle of the first model generation, a Vermilion red metallic BMW X3 xDrive35d, came off the line in Austria on Tuesday.

With the model change, production of the X3 was relocated to the South Carolina plant based on existing manufacturing proficiency of the BMW X5 and X6 models. The Spartanburg County plant has become the expertise center for the BMW X Models. The addition of the third model to the plant's vehicle mix has created several hundred new jobs and increased BMW's total investment in South Carolina to $4.6 billion since 1992.

BMW Manufacturing Co. is a subsidiary of BMW AG in Munich, Germany and is the global producer of the BMW X5 Sports Activity Vehicle and X6 Sports Activity Coupe. In addition to the South Carolina manufacturing facility, BMW North American subsidiaries include sales, marketing and financial services operations in the United States, Canada and throughout Latin America; and a design firm and technology office in California. For more information on BMW Manufacturing, visit www.bmwusfactory.com.

During the financial year 2009, the BMW Group sold approximately 1.29 million cars and more than 87,000 motorcycles worldwide.