Shanghai VW may boost capacity at Nanjing plant

Shanghai, July 29 (Gasgoo.com) Shanghai Volkswagen, a joint venture company between Volkswagen Group and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), is considering plans to expand production capacity at its fourth car plant in Nanjing to help it meet growing car demand in China, the 21st Century Business Herald reports Wednesday.

According to the report, senior VW executives who work on quality control have gone to Nanjing for a factory tour. And if decided, the automaker would increase the plant's capacity by 200,000 vehicles to 500,000 vehicles a year for production of a high-end model codenamed "NMS".

Shanghai VW took over the former Fiat and Nanjing Auto's defunct plant in April, 2008. The Nanjing plant has an annual production capacity of 60,000 vehicles a year initially, which could be raised to 300,000 by 2012. The first model produced there was the Santana Vista.

In the first half of this year Volkswagen sold a total of 652,222 cars in China, a 23 percent jump from a year earlier. Meanwhile Shanghai VW was China's top selling car maker with 319,683 sold in the six-month period.

"The increase of our deliveries to customers has been in line with the market growth in China, which benefited from the effectiveness and the success of the Chinese government's incentive automotive policy," Volkswagen said.

China's first-half vehicle sales rose 18 percent to 6.1 million after the government cut some retail taxes and handed out vehicle subsidies in rural areas to spur demand. Sales of passenger vehicles climbed 26 percent to 4.53 million units.