Ford on Friday (24 February) opened what it described one of the world’s newest, most efficient and sustainable automotive assembly plants in Chongqing, China.
The Changan Ford Mazda Automobile (CFMA) joint venture’s new plant, CFMA Chongqing Assembly 2, or CQ2, builds the redesigned third generation Focus and, Ford said, incorporates global industry ‘best practices’ to efficiently and safely produce high quality vehicles with minimal environmental impact.
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“This is a very special day,” said Joe Hinrichs, president of Ford Asia Pacific and Africa. “It’s not every day that you open a new assembly plant. This new plant represents a decades-long investment that will transform the lives of thousands of people. Following the vision of Henry Ford to produce vehicles where they are sold, the opportunities created by this expansion help create the ability for our production team to buy the vehicles they build. This expansion will benefit Chongqing and western China for years to come.”
CFMA spent US$490m on CQ2, boosting production capacity 150,000 to over 600,000. This is CFMA’s second assembly plant in Chongqing and its third in China. With two assembly plants and engine and transmission plants already operating, Chongqing is now the largest global manufacturing location for Ford outside southeast Michigan.
The plant is ramping up production of the Focus and will have produced over 150 prototypes for testing as it prepares for the sales launch in the second quarter. At CQ2 and elsewhere, up to 10 different models ultimately will be produced on the same platform and the company will sell 2m vehicles based on it worldwide this year.
Dave Schoch, chairman and CEO, Ford China, said: “[This is] the first of 15 new vehicles we are bringing here by 2015. This new flexible plant will help give us the capacity to realise our aggressive growth plans for the world’s largest automotive market.”
Plant facts:
- The production line at CQ2 is designed for maximum flexibility, enabling it to produce six different types of vehicles. This allows the company to bring new vehicles to market faster, and test new vehicles while maintaining full production speed.
- Sustainable paint shop – By maximizing a wide range of technologies – from re-circulating the air in the paint shop spray booths to recovering heat energy from the oven exhaust – the paint shop is able to return massive energy and environment savings. The energy saved – 58million kWh – is enough to power almost 20,000 households in a major Chinese city for a year, or to light up the entire Bund in Shanghai day and night for almost 2.5 years, Ford claims. The paint shop utilises an environmentally friendly, 3-wet high-solids paint process, improving paint quality, depth and durability, and significantly reducing volatile organic compounds, CO2 emissions and waste.
- Automation – the new 1m sq metre assembly plant includes stamping, body, assembly, paint, trim and final assembly operations. Automation includes one of the world’s fastest stamping presses and 116 robots in the body shop.
- CFMA in Chongqing – the JV operates a another assembly plant, as well as engine and transmission plants. Additional CFMA assembly and manufacturing plants are located in Nanjing.
