Speaking at the official opening of BMW's new plant in northeast China, set up with its joint venture partner Brilliance, BMW chief executive Helmut Panke said the group expected to increase its Asian sales by more than 50 percent over the next four years.
China is already BMW's eighth-largest market and, in the first four months of this year, group sales, including Mini and Rolls-Royce, were up 57 percent in China to 5,827 units, with almost 4,000 coming from the new Chinese plant.
Panke said that, at current growth rates, the Chinese car mar-ket could overtake Britain later this decade to become the world's fourth-biggest after the US, which has 17 million in sales, and Japan and Germany. Last year China saw car sales of 2 million against 2.58 million in Britain.
Chinese government officials said at the opening that the plant, which will produce 70,000 Brilliance cars a year at first, should be building 100,000 BMW cars by 2010. It will employ 3,000 people from next year in a region experiencing industrial regeneration.
Panke hopes Asian sales will rise from 93,000 last year to 150,000 by 2008.
BMW is planning a large investment at its Oxford plant to step up output of its best-selling Mini and meet soaring demand for the car, senior executives said yesterday.
The Mini is being held back by production bottlenecks at the factory, which, unique among BMW plants, works seven days a week, leaving little scope for the 4,500-strong workforce to put in extra hours.
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