Great Wall Motor Co., the only major domestic Chinese light-vehicle maker that has maintained sales growth this year, continues to build new production capacity in China.
It broke ground for an 8 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) vehicle assembly plant in Taizhou of east China’s Jiangsu province on Monday, the company said.
The factory, Great Wall’s eighth production site in east China, is slated to start output in Dec. 2020. It will build traditional and electrified vehicles for Haval, the company’s brand for mass-market crossovers and SUVs.
Earlier this year, Great Wall kicked off construction of plants in Pinghu of east China’s Zhejiang province and Rizhao of east China’s Shandong province. Both factories are expected to become operational in late 2020 or early 2021.
Great Wall now assembles vehicles in Baoding and Xushui of north China’s Hebei province, the north China municipality of Tianjin and the southwest China municipality of Chongqing.
It also expects to partner with BMW Group to build battery electric vehicles for its proprietary brands and the Mini brand in Zhangjiagang of east China’s Jiangsu province. But the joint venture agreement, signed in 2018, still needs to be approved by regulatory bodies in China.
In June, Great Wall opened its first overseas assembly plant in the Tula Oblast region of central Russia.
In October, the company’s sales rose 4.5 percent year on year to top 115,000 vehicles thanks to its expanded product mix.
For the first ten months, its deliveries rose 6.7 percent to approach 840,000. The number includes 687,884 crossovers and SUVs as well as 114,270 pickups.