VOLVO will start to issue an environmental product declaration (EPD) on all 2001 model year S80, V70, S40 and V40 cars to help 'green' fleet operators with their vehicle choice.

The EPD, verified by Lloyds Register Quality Assurance, describes the environmental impact of the cars during their production and road-going life, as well as the development of technologies for recycling end-of-life vehicles.

It also reports the progress made by suppliers, dealers and Volvo itself in implementing environmental management systems.

'The purpose of our EPDs is to provide those customers who wish to make environmental choices with a means of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of our products,' said Bodil Eriksson, senior vice-president of Volvo Cars.

'By describing the environmental performance of our products in a transparent manner, and allowing an independent inspector to examine all of the data and the entire process used to produce it, we have made it both simpler and safer for customers to make the necessary comparisons,' he added.

Volvo is spending more than €544 million on two of its European production facilities, in Belgium and Sweden.
The investment will see an increase in production at the Ghent plant from 160,000 to 325,000 cars annually and Torslanda plant, from 170,000 to 230,000 cars a year. Volvo will build the next generation of medium-size cars in Ghent, while production of it larger cars will be concentrated in Torslanda.
'We can now concentrate our volume production to two factories, which gives us economy of scale advantages and the possibility to effectively rationalise our activities further,' said Curt Germundsson, senior vice-president of manufacturing.

The investments arose from Volvo's need to find a 'suitable alternative' for the production of medium-size cars following its withdrawal from its 50% ownership stake in the NedCar factory in the Netherlands. (August 2000)