Luxury future for Geely

It sounds like thunder is booming every few seconds as a gigantic press takes flat sheets of steel and in an instant turns them into what is recognisable as a car floor.

The robotic arms that lift the steel sheets and take them away seem to work at a frenetic pace – and no wonder, because the car maker Geely, which runs this factory, is selling cars by the transporter load.

Like many of China’s car makers, the company has enjoyed heavy sales increases this year, thanks to government incentives for car buyers and rapid economic growth. In the first six months of this year, Geely sold 217,418 cars in China, an increase of 33.9 per cent on the same period last year. And last year – a time when many car manufacturers were reeling from the global slump – sales reached 325,413, up 59 per cent on 2008.

The second half of this year is likely to be less impressive as sales growth in China slows, but nonetheless Geely is likely to break its sales record this year – just as many of China’s other car manufacturers will, with the market having grown 47 per cent year-on-year in January to June.

Geely has said it wants to sell two million cars in 2015, a plan that will require the launch of dozens of new models developed at modest cost through the company’s platform-sharing strategy.

The floor panels being pressed by the dozen at this factory in Ningbo, one of half a dozen Geely has across China, are destined to find their way into a car called the EC718, sold under Geely’s Emgrand brand.

Farther on in the factory, men in hard hats, blue overalls and safety glasses send sparks flying into the air and across the floor as they weld the various panels together, while beside them silver, unpainted body shells make their way slowly down the production line amid a blur of twisting orange robots.

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