Burnaston Vs Valenciennes, battle of the car plants. :: Economics

Burnaston Vs Valenciennes, battle of the car plants.Bosses at Toyota tonight face a difficult decision tonight at where tolocate their new manufacturing plant. The options they give up are eitherBurnaston in Derby where they have a well-established plant along withexperience workers or the town of Valencieennes in northern France.Here at the financial Times we have had a debate about which one theyshould go for.Burnaston There are many advantages of them expanding on this site.They have a well-established work force with skilled labourers and alot of room for expansion. They produce a score of 200 000 cars a yearwhich bring home the bacon 5% of the U.K with Toyota cars. Unfortunately they willreceive no government documentation for the extra project, as Derby has ahigh level of employment. Also it is unlikely to lift the sales ofToyota cars in the U.K so they will be paying a lot out intransportation make ups over to the EU. They have the benefit ofexperience on their side and t he fact they would only be paying 10%tax for distributively employee where as in France it is 45% tax a considerableamount more and they wages would be higher.Valenciennes The advantages of basing they new factory here aregreater than in Derby. They would receive 10% of the total factoryprice from the government along with waiving some of the employmenttaxes for a fixed period of time and would provide training grants forworkers, as Valenciennes is a town of high employment levels unlikeBurnaston. They would have a new Green field site but would have noutilities so would have to lay them on. They would be close by tomotorways and rail links to the rest of Europe and the channel tunnelwhere they would transport engines from Derby. The estimate of opening aplant in France is to raise the amount of Toyotas in France from 1.1%to 5% of a few years as it would be easier to transport them more or lessFrance. They would also hope to transport them around the continent,as they would be ne ar to major European countries such as Germany,Belgium, Spain and Italy. This is an advantage on Burnaston, as itwould cost more to transport to the other EU countries from there.We think that Toyota should build the new base in France for a varietyof reasons. They would receive more government funding for building inFrance as they have high levels of unemployment so a large corporationwould be welcomed. They would also receive grants for training, as the