Its official: Mercedes-Benz is relocating its corporate headquarters from Montvale, New Jersey to Atlanta, Georgia in a move that should help the company in a number of ways.
The move puts an end to the company's 42-year-old ties with Montvale and affects about 1,000 employees, all of which will be phased to "minimize any disruption to business operations," the automaker said. Mercedes-Benz will keep a number of operational locations in both Montvale and Robbinsville, New Jersey.
The automaker expects to have a brand-new headquarters in Atlanta completed sometime in 2017. Executives and staff will begin the transition process at a temporary facility in July 2015.
"New Jersey has been a wonderful home to our U.S. operations for our first 50 years, and still is today," President and CEO Steve Cannon said in a press statement. "The state has worked tirelessly with us as we evaluated our options. Ultimately, though, it became apparent that to achieve the sustained, profitable growth and efficiencies we require for the decades ahead, our headquarters would have to be located elsewhere. That brought us to Atlanta."
The move makes Mercedes-Benz the most recent automaker to recently announce a relocation of its U.S. headquarters. Cadillac will soon move its headquarters from Detroit to New York, and it's yet unclear how many current employees will follow. Toyota plans to move nearly all of its North American marketing, sales and other corporate operations from southern California and the Cincinnati area to Dallas, and Nissan made a similar move from Los Angeles to Nashville several years ago.
Atlanta is 200 miles from Vance, Ala., where the automaker has manufactured light vehicles since the 1990s.
"Atlanta is a premier city which places us closer to our ever-growing Southeast customer base, our port in Brunswick, Georgia, and to Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, our Alabama manufacturing facility, which accounts for half of the vehicles we sell here in the U.S. For our employees, Atlanta offers a strong quality of life, terrific schools and wonderful cultural and recreational opportunities," Cannon said.
Make sure to check back as AutoWorldNews finds out more regarding the big move.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
