A Swedish court on Friday granted permission to Volvo Cars, a unit of Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F), to increase its car production to 350,000 vehicles a year from a previous limit of 260,000 vehicles at its Torslanda plant in Goteborg, Sweden.

The permission was granted by a court dealing with environmental cases and is open for appeal until Dec. 15.

Volvo Cars spokesman Christer Gustafsson said the grant was ``good news,'' but that it had been sought mainly because the old permission received in 2003 was due to expire in 2007.

``At the moment it doesn't mean that we're planning to hire more people, it's rather a matter for us to be allowed to bump up capacity if our sales figures go up,'' he said. ``We seek these permissions in good time, so that they don't end up being a bottleneck for production.''

It was too early to give any estimates on future production figures, Gustafsson said.

The new permission is not time restricted.

The Torslanda factory has around 5,500 employees and produces around 700 cars a day.