Geely intends to build up to three new car plants in China to produce cars by recently acquired Volvo domestically.
The plants would give the Chinese firm the capacity to build nearly 300,000 of the Swedish firm’s cars each year.
Read more about Geely’s takeover of Volvo
Geely bought Volvo last month and faces the challenge of restoring the company back to profit. Volvo suffered a pre-tax loss of $653 million (£422m) in 2009.
Geely spokesman Ning Shuyong said possible locations for the plants are Chengdu, Daqing and the outskirts of Shanghai.
Duties on imports to China, and even between Chinese states, are very stringent so it is of benefit to manufacturers to build cars close to where they will be sold.
Read more on Geely's plans to shift Volvo upmarket and boost productionRead more on new CEO Stefan Jacoby's plans for Volvo
Geely has yet to announce a schedule for when the plants will be built. Li Shufu, Geely’s chairman and founder, said: "It takes time. It may take years."
Geely spokesman Shuyong added that the plan still needed to be approved by both Volvo and the Chinese government.
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Re: Three Chinese plants for Volvo
Autocar continues to wrongly describe Volvo as loss making. It moved into profit late last year and has made c$100million in the first 6 months of this year. Another case of Ford seling a company just as it was about to come good...and this is before sales of the new S60 and V60 start.
Re: Three Chinese plants for Volvo
The XC90 has been selling like hot cakes and I wouldn't turn my nose up at one, but that largely due to the £10,000 discounts on it!
On the plus side, anyone on the roads much will have noticed shed loads of XC60's have been sold and they have not needed to heavily discount them, despite not being cheap either. If Volvo would like me to do a long term test on one (say 10 years?) I would be very please to assist (Black please). Thank you.
Re: Three Chinese plants for Volvo
It's strange that Ford sold a company who's products were in such high demand. I believe the XC90 has sold well, and recently talking to a Volvo salesman the C30 you can't get before Spring next year!