Geely open CKD plant in Indonesia

The Zhejiang Geely Holding Group together with it's local partner Information Gateway Corp Sdn Bhd (IGC) has held an opening ceremony for its CKD plant near Jakarta, capital of Indonesia on Wednesday. The plant will assemble Ceely Ziyoujian model in the form of CKD with a scheduled production capacity of 30,000 units.

Holding a production target of 700,000 by 2009, Indonesia has ambitions of becoming a regional auto manufacturing and assembly hub, which will surely create big opportunities for Geely's entry into this region.

Sources from IGC say that cars produced at this plant will go on sale in Indonesia's market as of July and a total of 2,000 vehicles will be assembled here by the end of this year. Currently only two models are assembled here while Geely hopes to introduce five more to this plant in the coming two years.

Geely initially planed to produce cars in Malaysia, but the proposal was rejected by the local government who considered Geely a "direct competition to the national car [Proton]," and would allow them to be assembled in the country only for exports.

CKD plant at Indonesia is one of Geely's three assemble plants opened overseas recently. Another plant situated at Ukraine has already started operation at the beginning of April, while the Russia plant will be launched in the second half of this year. The overall production of the three plants is to reach 70,000 – 80,000 units per year.

"Geely aims to greatly promote export in future and make efforts to hit a volume of 1.3 million before 2015, "said Geely's chairman and founder Li Shufu. The Zhejiang-based company export vehicles to more than 40 countries and regions worldwide, most of which are developing countries in the Middle East, North Africa, South East Asia, South America, etc.