Volkswagen yesterday opened a new production plant in China.
The plant is located in Yizheng, Jiangsu Province and is expected to have an annual manufacturing capacity of 300,000 cars.
China is a vast and growing market for Volkswagen Group, which counts among the brands it owns Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, Bentley, SEAT, Lamborghini, and - by the end of this month - Porsche.
In 2011, the company sold 2.26 million vehicles in China. In the first half of 2012, it sold approximately 1.3 million units, a 17.5-percent increase over the same period last year.
The company said in a statement announcing the Shanghai plant's opening that it intends for Volkswagen Group China to have an annual manufacturing capacity of 4 million units by 2018.
The Yizheng plant will begin producing the Volkswagen Polo, with production of Skoda models to follow. It will be the second plant in China manufacturing the Polo.
Yizheng is located approximately 185 miles northwest of Shanghai. The new plant will support roughly 3,700 new jobs in the region. It will feature press, body, paint, and final assembly divisions, a testing centre, and an employee training unit. It has a total area of almost 14 million square feet.
"With a construction period of two years, we are even opening our new facility in Yizheng earlier than planned," Jochem Heizmann, who sits on Volkswagen AG's board of managers and was on hand for the plant's opening, said in a statement. "This is one of the most environmentally compatible plants of the Volkswagen Group. With advanced technologies and new production processes, we intend to continue to play an instrumental role in the future of China as an automobile country."
Environmentally friendly features of the plant include solar-powered chargers for trucks and for employees' e-bikes, and a geothermal heating and cooling system for the plant's halls.
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