HUACHEN BMW TO INVEST US$12.3 MLN IN CAPACITY EXPANSION IN CHINA

Monday September 19, 2005, 5:52 pm


SHENYANG, Sept 19 Asia Pulse - Huachen BMW Automotive Co., Ltd., a Sino-German joint venture headquartered in Shenyang, northeast China, has planned to make an additional investment of 100 million yuan (US$12.3 million) to expand the scale of its China facilities, said Eberhard Schrempf, CEO of the company at a forum here on September 16.

Huachen BMW is a joint venture between BMW Group of Germany and Huachen Automotive Group Holding Co., Ltd. of China, established in 2003. ADVERTISEMENT

Its head office is in Shenyang with 2,000 employees at present, but its marketing headquarters is in Beijing with about 150 employees.

The company sold 10,000 cars in the first eight months of this year, exceeding the figure for the whole of last year.

Speaking at the forum titled Developing Automotive and Auto Parts Manufacturing of China, Schrempf predicted that car sales in China will double the present figure before 2009 to exceed that in Japan.

He citied results of a survey as saying that 29 percent of Chinese people hope to buy BMW cars though some of them are unable to afford.

Statistics show that every 100 people in China now own 5.12 cars, while the ratio is as high as 50 units in western nations.

At present, only 3.7 percent of the population in China has bought cars, but the proportion will rise to 10 percent by 2010.

Huachen-BMW is engaged in manufacturing, sale and after sale services of BMW brand cars.