Mercedes-Benz starts $500 million van plant

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Prompted by growing North American demand for its vans, Mercedes-Benz Vans broke ground Wednesday on a new $500 million U.S. assembly plant in South Carolina.

The site is next to an existing plant where, for the past decade, the company has put Sprinter vans made in Germany back together after being disassembled and shipped to this country because of the high duties on importing finished vehicles.

“The logistics process is a nightmare,” Volker Mornhinweg, the head of Mercedes-Benz Vans, told reporters.

In the existing factory, the parts and bodies of the vans, shipped through the Port of Charleston, are reassembled in a process that takes four to five hours.

During the past decade, Mercedes-Benz Vans has been gauging the North American market for its vans and sales have been growing. Last year, the company delivered 28,600 vans to customers in the United States, an increase of 11 percent over 2014.

After Germany, the United States is the largest market for the vans.