Volvo Cars (www.olvogroup.com) has officially opened its first US manufacturing plant (in South Carolina), establishing the company as a global car manufacturer with plants in all three major sales regions.

Having a ‘state of the art’ production facility in Charleston follows Volvo Cars’ global manufacturing strategy to ‘build where you sell’.

The company already has two car factories and an engine plant in Europe, three car factories and an engine plant in China, and assembly plants in India and Malaysia.

The US plant will start production of the Volvo S60 premium mid-size sports saloon — based on its Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) platform — this autumn.

From 2021, it will also build the next generation of the Volvo XC90 large premium SUV. Cars built at the plant are destined both for the domestic US market and for export.

Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars, said: “The saloon segment and the SPA platform’s proven ability to boost profitability offer significant growth opportunities for Volvo Cars in the USA and globally.”

Volvo Cars is investing around $1.1 billion in its US manufacturing operations, and it will create around 4,000 jobs at the Charleston site over the next few years.

The plant will be able to produce 150,000 cars per year at full capacity.