Nissan has sold its automobile factory in Indonesia

In 2014, Nissan proudly announced that they had just opened a brand new automobile factory in Indonesia. This 60,000 square meter factory had a huge JPY 33 billion (in 2014) investment attached to it in order to produce the returning Datsun brand for the Indonesian market. This was Nissan’s second factory in the country, and it would have added about 150,000 units per year to their total.

In 2025, however, the factory was producing 0 units per year. That’s because the plant itself was shuttered in 2019, as Datsun return did not pan out.

Now it seems Nissan has been able to recoup some of their investment, as the factory (and the company in Indonesia) has now been sold to one of their partners: Indomobil.

In a report, PT Indomobil Sukses Internasional Tbk (IMAS) have announced that they have officially acquired PT Nissan Motor Indonesia (NMI) from Nissan Motor Company. The transaction was done through one of their subsidiaries: PT National Assemblers (NA).

Indomobil, through their subsidiary, was able to acquire 99.9% of the shares of NMI. This purchase gives them the manufacturing business which is separate from the distributor business of Nissan, which is Nissan Motor Distributor Indonesia (NMDI). Indomobil also owns 75% of NMDI, while Nissan retains 25%.

Indomobil, however, has yet to announce what brand they will use it for. What is interesting about the group is that they are distributors for many passenger and commercial vehicle brands in the country. Their portfolio includes Maxus, JAC, GWM, Changan, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, Aion, Citroen, Land Rover, Jaguar, Kia, Suzuki, Nissan, Volvo, Hino, Volkswagen, and Hongqi.

They could use the factory to produce models for one of those brands; likely to be one of the Chinese brands under their banner. They could also follow the example set by Sime Darby’s Inokom in Malaysia, and get a license to produce from different brands of their most viable models for the country.

We would be curious if they would produce models from one of those brands for export to the Philippines, as currently we import many popular models from Toyota, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Honda, Isuzu, and Hyundai. Oh, and the Nissan Livina too which is made at the Mitsubishi plant along with the Xpander, but that’s a separate story.