Volkswagen Group and its joint venture FAW-Volkswagen today inaugurated a new plant in Foshan, Southern China. The plant will have an initial production capacity of 300,000 vehicles per year, with plans to double the output in the medium term.
The plant has already started production of the VW Golf Mk7, with the Audi A3 Sedan to follow before the end of this year. The facility is the first in China based on the modular transverse toolkit (MQB) and can simultaneously build VW and Audi models.
China is the Volkswagen Group’s largest sales market worldwide, with 2012 deliveries exceeding 2.81 million vehicles. In the first eight months of this year, deliveries were up by 17.9 percent compared with the same period in 2012, to 2.05 million vehicles.
“This new plant creates 6,500 skilled jobs and will systematically foster new talent. We are thus laying the foundations for an innovative and sustainable automotive industry in Southern China,” said Jochem Heizmann, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China.
The joint venture already operates two vehicle production plants in China, one in Changchun and one in Chengdu. The VW Group will add four new plants in the country over the next few years, including the Foshan facility. VW estimates that by 2018, the number of employees will increase from the present 75,000 to 100,000, while annual production capacity is set to rise from around 2.6 million to over 4 million.
By Dan Mihalascu
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