The Volkswagen Group is expanding its production capacity as planned in the world’s largest auto market with the opening of Shanghai-Volkswagen’s new plant in Ningbo, south eastern China. The plant is designed for an annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles.
The Ningbo plant located some 150 km south of Anting (greater Shanghai area) will create 5,700 new jobs. With its own press, body and paint shops, plus a final assembly unit, production gets underway with the new Skoda Superb. Volkswagen and Skoda models based on the MQB platform will follow in the next stage.
The new plant is claimed to set new standards for sustainable, resource-efficient car production in China. Advanced processes and measures to reduce energy consumption are key elements in this strategy. For example, steam from the condensers is used to heat water. Water consumption in the paint shop is cut by 90% compared with conventional processes, and annual CO2 emissions are reduced by 15,000 tonnes.
The Ningbo factory is VW’s 16th in China and Shanghai-Volkswagen’s fifth plant. The joint venture currently operates factories in Anting, Nanjing and Yizheng, Jiangsu province. In addition, production at the plant in Urumqi, Xinjiang region, commenced a few weeks ago. A further plant in Changsha, south central China, is scheduled for completion in 2015.
China is the VW Group’s largest market. In 2012, the company and its partners (Shanghai-Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen) delivered 2.81 million vehicles in China. In the first nine months of this year, deliveries rose by 18% to 2.36 million vehicles. The group is aiming to expand annual production capacity to around four million vehicles by 2018.
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Without China, VW will be slightly behind Proton and miles behind Perudua.
Better make sure your DSG is in order. Next time China won’t be so kind, they might just jail all the VW staff in China. China government already fed up with the DSG scandal. its getting on their nerves. They are monitoring it closely. VW China was forced by the China government to do a recall. Lets see what happens next when more DSG kaput.
Next time China won’t be so kind, they will close all 16 Volkswagen factories and send the workers… home? ;)
How impressive to see China getting foreign investment in their country. Their policy makes car manufacturers interested. In Malaysia we just envy them as our policy is impossible to be amended. In future time we will see our country is left behind. All thanks to our beloved but hate it G.
You are dreaming or what, we already way behind China in car industries and in almost all other aspects.
How much cars does Proton sell in China? Zero!
Wrong. Many Gen-2’s and Persona’s are sold over there. they were rebadged as Europestar Lotus L3 and Lotus L3 JingYue.
Once again, I’d like to tell you that there’s a lot of them. Lotus brand is very influential lol. Like Toyota brand selling Thai Vios over here.
another plant to assemble faulty gear boxes ??? have they fixed their DSG problem?
Won’t help Toyota too much. Mainland Chinese boycott japanese cars :D