Not all car manufacturers are suffering from the economic crisis that is currently raging in Europe. Volvo, for one, is expecting to sell between 430,000-440,000 units this year, compared to 374,000 cars last year.
According to the Swedish carmaker’s CEO, Stefan Jacoby, the reason for this is that Volvo’s biggest European markets are in Scandinavia and Germany, which don’t face the financial crisis that storms the southern regions like Italy, Spain and Greece.
“There is no sign of a slowdown. Our order books are filled up until spring 2012”, Jacoby told Autonews Europe.
The Swedish automaker’s current global workforce is about 24,000 employees including 16,000 in Sweden, 5,000 in Belgium, 1,000 in China and 2,000 in other markets.
As a result of the booming sales, Volvo will add more than 10,000 new employees in order to reach its target of 800,000 annual sales by 2020. In Jacoby’s own words, “by 2020, we will have to increase our headcount to 33,000 – 35,000 employees”.
Volvo, which was sold by Ford to China’s Geely in 2010, is planning to add two new factories in China. The first one in Chengdu is scheduled to open in 2013 and will have an annual capacity of 150,000 units employing around 3,000 workers, while Jacoby hopes that the local government will approve a second plant early next year.
Therefore, most of the 10,000 additional employees worldwide will be in China where Volvo wants to quadruple its sales, from 48-49,000 units this year, to 200,000 by the end of the decade.
