Geely, Faurecia form interiors joint venture
Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., French supplier Faurecia SA and private Chinese supplier Zhejiang Linmin Group Co. will form a joint venture to produce interior and exterior components for Geely's own-brand models.
Under the contract signed July 3, the partners will build "three to four" plants to supply five Geely assembly plants under construction in China, according to Geely and Faurecia.
Geely is building plants in Ningbo and Ninghai in east China's Zhejiang province, Xiangtan in central China's Hunan province, Jinan in east China's Shandong province and Lanzhou in China's northwest Gansu province.
Limin is Geely's current supplier of interior and exterior components. The company operates two plants in Geely's home province of Zhejiang, on China's coast.
Further details about the new supplier factories are not available.
In the first five months, Geely sold 108,286 own-brand vehicles, up 12 percent from the same period last year, according to Automotive Resources Asia, a J.D. Power unit.
Geely is set to complete its $1.8 billion (12.2 billion yuan) purchase of Volvo Car Corp. from Ford in the third quarter of this year.
This is the second Chinese joint venture announced by Faurecia in recent weeks. Earlier, the company bought a 19 percent stake in Chinese supplier Xuyang Group to provide seats and other components to FAW Group.
Faurecia's 17 plants in China supply seats, emissions equipment and interior componnets to the joint ventures of Volkswagen AG, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Nissan Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co.