Chery Wanda Bus plans to build an international commercial vehicle plant in Guiyang Economic and Technological Development Zone -- the GETDZ-- in Guiyang, capital of southwestern Guizhou province, according to Nov 15 reports in the local media.
Officials said the background to this is the construction of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor -- which is bringing unprecedented business opportunities for Guiyang's companies.
The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor is a trade and logistics passage jointly built by western Chinese provincial regions and Singapore under the framework of the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity.
Guizhou is one of nine provinces to have signed up to the corridor and the city of Chongqing is the center of operations.
GETDZ officials said that with the help of the corridor, the bus group's new plant at the zone will spur the development of existing industries there, they said.
They added that it will also promote the further development of existing enterprises -- within new opening-up of the area, exploring links between land and sea, to the mutual benefit of the East and West.
Currently, Chery Wanda Bus is promoting talent localization and procurement supply chain localization. It is striving to achieve a procurement supply chain localization level of over 50 percent, through 5-year strategic planning.
Zone officials said that in the wake of the construction of a Southern Land-Sea Trade Corridor, Chery Wanda Bus signed a cooperation agreement with GETDZ to build an automobile production base, as well as the proposed global commercial vehicle production plant in the zone for 10 billion yuan ($1.42 billion).
At the same time, it plans to expand and transform its existing automobile final assembly lines, welding lines and chassis lines.
The company said it will actively carry out research and development of various new models, enrich and improve its product series, improve production capacity, realize full coverage of commercial vehicle series products and move to achieve an annual output value of 10 billion yuan by 2025.