Peugeot’s new assembly plant at Trnava in Slovakia will open for business in the middle of next year, with an annual production capacity of 300,000 units.

Suppliers are suggesting that this will increase to 500,000 units in 2009.

PSA-Peugeot/Citroen already has several large factories in western Europe. The AutoFacts division of PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests that six of them in France and Spain have capacities exceeding 400,000 units annually.

By comparison, the Peugeot factory at Ryton, Coventry, is much smaller, with a capacity of 180,000 units.

At present Ryton has no contract to build anything other than the 206.

Peugeot says it will keep Ryton open until at least 2010, but it is still unclear as to what it will be building by then.