Delphi Corporation is to invest $US40.5 million to enlarge an existing automotive parts plant near Shanghai to supply the world’s fastest-growing major car market.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Delphi, which has now invested just under $500 million in more than a dozen factories around the country, expects that new capacity to come on-stream in the third quarter of 2004, the company said in a statement seen by the Reuters news agency.
The plant in Suzhou, an hour’s drive from China’s commercial capital, now makes circuit boards for vehicles and about a quarter of the output from Delphi’s China plants is now exported, Reuters said, adding that the majority however goes to the fast-growing local market, where vehicle production hit 4.4 million units last year, up 34.2% from 2002.
Consolidated revenue from Delphi’s China operations rose 50% to $650 million in 2003, the report noted.
Delphi supplies the mainland joint ventures of Volkswagen and General Motors as well as local firms such as SAIC-Chery Automobile and Brilliance China Automotive Holdings.
Reuters said that the Michigan-based company has shed more than 17,500 jobs, or about 8% of its global workforce, since the end of 2000 as it struggled to diversify its customer base and become less reliant on business from former parent General Motors.
Delphi’s main foreign rival in China is Visteon the components spin-off of Ford, the report added.
