Japan's Isuzu Motors will spend 30 billion yen ($382 million) to build new factories in China and India to tap rising demand for pickup trucks in the fast-growing markets, a report said on Tuesday.
The new plants will together produce about 200,000 trucks a year, boosting Isuzu's annual pickup capacity by about 50 percent to 600,000 by 2015, the Nikkei business daily reported without citing sources.
In China, Isuzu will build a factory in the southeastern city of Nanchang with local automaker Jiangling Motors Group, the Nikkei report said.
The new facility will be able to produce 100,000 vehicles annually, it said.
Isuzu's planned factory near the southern Indian city of Chennai will also churn out about 100,000 pickups a year, it added.
Isuzu could not be immediately reached to comment on the report.
The factories are aimed at not only building Isuzu's brand in the two Asian nations, but also to expand its production base after the company's facilities in Thailand were hit by record flooding last year, the report said.
The disaster disrupted the supply chains of many Japanese and other foreign firms with plants in the Southeast Asian country.
Demand for pickup trucks has been growing in many emerging nations, partly due to poor road conditions.