A new Geely high-end vehicle plant broke ground in the Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone on April 2, according to zone officials.
The project -- which will mainly manufacture for Geely’s subsidiary Lotus Cars -- is the second key auto manufacturing facility in WHDZ, following the Dongfeng Yunfeng plant.
Geely said it will use the new facility as a springboard to enhance Lotus’ capabilities in marketing, costs, research and development and operations. It wants to consolidate and strengthen the position and influence of Lotus as a luxury and high-performance automobile brand -- and help Lotus explore emerging markets including China.
Executives said Geely will invite world-renowned design companies to participate in the overall planning of an industrial park. It wants to build the project as a world-class, industry benchmark manufacturing base.
With the development of this project, WHDZ is expected to develop a trillion-yuan level auto industry manufacturing cluster and advance the transformation and upgrading of the scale and pattern of the industry in Wuhan.
The city is already known as the "car capital of China" with a number of Fortune Global 500 corporations and top Chinese companies having set up factories there.
These include Dongfeng Motor, Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile (DPCA), Dongfeng Honda, Dongfeng Renault, Getrak, Delphi, Valeo, Honeywell, Visteon and Wanxiang.
Geely is a global well-known auto group, which has been one of the Fortune Global 500 companies for seven consecutive years.
In 2018, Geely sold some 2.15 million vehicles, 1.5 million of them cars, ranking it first among Chinese automobile brands.
Zone officials said Geely's project will expand the volume of automobile industry. It will add another new player operating there, joining the existing Chinese, French, Japanese and other national auto marques. Meanwhile, they added, Lotus will also make up for the lack of high-end models currently in WHDZ.
Officials said Wuhan had made every effort to win the competition for the Geely project.
"Wuhan's location, industrial base and talent advantages are the biggest factors to attract projects," according to one senior zone officials.
He added that Wuhan had the edge with its central, strategic location --- enabling companies based there to access a wide range of transportation modes including rail, water, road and air.
WHDZ already has a strong industrial base there, with hundreds of auto parts companies having settled in the zone. In addition, there are 200,000 skilled automobile workers in WHDZ, nearly 100 universities and millions of college students in the city.
Officials said WHDZ established a special category -- to provide one-stop services in the whole process of land bidding, auctions and listing, enterprise registration and administrative approval -- and held a coordination meeting every week, which saved Geely a lot of trouble.
Moving ahead, the park is expected to further facilitate the Geely project in terms of the construction and industrial chain improvements.
