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- Geely seeks foreign partners for growth
Date: 23-Oct-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
GEELY Automobile Holdings Ltd. was eager to link up with foreign car and parts makers to enter a new phase of growth, chairman Li Shufu said yesterday.
'We started off building and selling cheap cars, but now we are changing,'he told an industry conference in Tokyo ahead of the Tokyo Motor Show this week.
'We are very, very eager to form alliances,'he added.
Geely is one of China's few privately-run auto companies with no foreign partners locally.
Selling some of China's cheapest cars under the Geely and Maple brands, Geely is planning to double capacity next year and set up assembly plants in North America and Europe, as it looks to expand beyond a fiercely competitive home market.
'We have great respect for Japanese automakers and want to cooperate with them,'Li said, without ruling out other countries' manufacturers.
Geely's various expansion plans in China will bring its annual capacity to 600,000 vehicles. By 2010, it wants to build 1 million cars a year. Geely expects to sell 240,000 cars this year, more than one-third more than last year's 175,635 units.
Geely now has a deal with Manganese Bronze Holdings Plc. to make London black taxi cabs in China starting next year, with an initial capacity of 30,000 units.
Local rival Chery Automobile Co., meanwhile, has a deal to supply small cars to Chrysler LLC.
Geely last month slashed its full-year sales target 20 percent to 190,000 vehicles after price cuts failed to stem a decline in demand. Sales of cars with engines of less than 1 liter plunged almost 30 percent in China in the first half because customers used stock market gains to buy larger sedans, Geely said in a statement Sept. 10.
Geely plans to add four new cars in the second half, including a revamped Free Cruiser compact and a King Kong hatchback. The company won't lower prices for old models after cutting prices by 5 percent to 6 percent in the first half.
Geely's first-half vehicle sales fell 3 percent to 84,111, it said in a Sept. 7 statement. China's passenger car sales surged 22 percent in the period from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
'Sales in the second half will be higher than in the first half, mainly driven by the higher-end models,'' Li said in Hong Kong on Sept. 10
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