Big plans for small engines: Yanmar to produce 100,000 industrial diesel engines annually in the U.S.; TNV assembly to join marine engine production i

Yanmar has announced that it has plans to produce 3 and 4 L industrial diesel engines at its Yanmar Manufacturing America (YMA) facility in Adairsville, Ga., by this time next year. Eventually, the company plans to build as many as 100,000 of the TNV series engines in the U.S., which Yanmar believes will be needed to meet increasing demand for its products in North America. Currently, all of the industrial engines of that class are built at the company's Biwa, Japan, facilities. YMA is currently focusing on assembly of marine engines for pleasure craft applications.

"Expanding our production base outside Japan is nothing new for us," said Jeff Williams, manager, sales and marketing, Industrial Engine Marketing at Yanmar America Corp., Buffalo Grove, Ill. "Yanmar has an overall corporate philosophy of trying to build our products as close to the end user as possible. Our manufacturing plant in Adairsville is now already assembling marine pleasure craft engines in the 200 to 500 hp output range.

"Other examples of products being built outside Japan include transmissions in Tennessee and South Carolina; horizontal cylinder, water-cooled diesel engines in Indonesia, Thailand and China; air-cooled industrial diesel engines in Italy; marine diesel engines in The Netherlands; and construction equipment in France."

Yanmar said it will invest between $4 million and $5 million to establish the new production area in Adairsville. The company said it will also expand its basic production capacity of the Biwa plant to bring its combined small industrial diesel manufacturing capability to 400,000 units per year. Yanmar said it was targeting sales increases up to 25% to approximately $900 million with this increased capacity.

The Biwa plant is employing an enhanced production system designed to increase annual production capacity by 20% to 350,000 units. Upon the inauguration of U.S. production, Yanmar will return the production capacity to the ordinary level of 300,000 units annually. The U.S. plant will phase in production capacity up to a final annual production capacity of 100,000 units.

Along with the TNV diesels, Williams said Yanmar would also begin assembly of V-twin diesel engines at YMA. Originally introduced as the model 2V78, the company will introduce a Tier 2 compliant, low noise version of the engine to be sold as the Vengeance 750 series. Assembly of those engines is likely to commence around midyear, the company said.