Wheel Manufacturer to Build Plant in Mexico

Superior Industries International Inc., the Van Nuys-based maker of cast aluminum wheels, said its board has approved the development of a $30-million manufacturing plant in Mexico.

The company said it was looking at several sites to build the 250,000-square-foot plant, which would employ 500 people and begin shipping wheels in 1994. Superior said it hoped to supply wheels to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, all of which have operations in Mexico. GM and Ford are Superior’s main customers.

Superior’s Mexican plant would be its second outside the United States and will have a capacity to make 1 million wheels a year, about half the capacity of its plant in Van Nuys. Superior’s other U.S. plants are in Arkansas, Kansas and Tennessee. The company’s first foreign wheel plant, in Canada, was shut down in December, 1990.