Below is the fourth of the serial research report about the trends among Japanese automotive parts suppliers operating in China. Part 4 contains findings from MarkLines research on the recent trends in Hubei province, Henan province, and Hunan province of Central China, and in Chongqing city and Sichuan province of the southwestern China in the past two years up to June 2012.

 The primary customers of the Japanese parts suppliers, namely Nissan and Honda, are rapidly expanding their existing plants or building new ones or new production lines in central China to catch up with the brisk production and sales of their vehicles.

 Nissan is expanding its Xiangyang plant in Hubei province to increase annual capacity from 100,000 vehicles at the end of 2011 to 250,000 vehicles by the end of 2012. Likewise, the company is expanding two existing plants in Henan province to increase annual capacity from 210,000 to 380,000 vehicles in the same span. In addition, it has been reported that Nissan is considering building a new plant capable of producing 200,000 vehicles a year starting in or around 2015.

 Honda is to start a second passenger car plant in Wuhan, Hubei province in July 2012. Combined with the first plant, Honda has increased production capacity in Wuhan by 100,000 vehicles to 340,000 vehicles. The company has plans to expand the second plant to increase capacity in Wuhan to 360,000 vehicles in 2013, to 480,000 vehicles by 2015.

 In response to these moves, Japanese parts suppliers are expanding their existing plants or building new plants and lines in the regions.

 In addition to these, other parts suppliers including Furukawa Electric, Shoda Seisakusho and Mabuchi Motor are strengthening their production and sales capacities to meet growing demands among Japanese OEMs such as Toyota expanding its plant in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and Suzuki planning to build a new plant in Chongqing.

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